New e-Permitting for Wetland and Stream Permits

restoration
Written By Becca Madsen

Today, the US Army Corps of Engineers officially unveiled additional functionality for its Regulatory Request System (RRS, aka e-permitting).

The Corps announcement (May 15 2024)

The site says it’s now possible to submit individual permits, nationwide permits, and other general permit pre-construction notifications (JDs and preapp meeting requests have already been rolled out). EPIC has been user testing as well as facilitating input on this e-permitting system from 40 individuals representing 17 diverse organizations. Why? Because over 60,000 requests (permits, JDs, and mitigation bank actions) go through Corps approval every year, and e-permitting systems can significantly save staff and applicant time, can provide transparency and accountability of agency goals and timeframes, and can make public data actually public. What are we getting with this iteration of the tool? Looks like one out of three - saved time (that’s a start!!!). We heard an estimate that Corps staff could save 10% of the time spent on permit reviews because they will no longer have to manually transfer information from pdf permits into the Corps’ national permit database called ORM (which stands for the OMBIL Regulatory Module, and OMBIL stands for… well, who knows and it doesn’t matter). No one wants to do manual drudgery when they grow up so HUZZAH for that!

What are we missing? The incorporation of functionalities similar to Virginia’s Permitting Enhancement and Evaluation Platform, the development of APIs (application programming interfaces), and the integration of publicly available data, to start. Read on for additional detail on the top 3 things that could change, along with a lot of other ideas to make e-permitting great. 

For background on RRS and to view screenshots of the tool, check out our February 20th blog, The Corps’ New e-Permitting - First Look at Current Functionality.  

Why Do We Need to Get this Right?

In 2022, the Corps completed 60,000 actions (42.5k permit actions, 20k JDs, and 200 mitigation bank actions, per Sept 2023 presentation by Tom Walker). Getting an e-permitting system right has huge time implications for all involved. Beyond the permittees that were the focus of RRS beta testing, multiple stakeholder groups have an interest in RRS for business implications, tracking wetland impacts, identifying whether agency policy goals are met, and other interests. The Environmental Policy Innovation Center gathered input from 40 individuals representing 17 diverse organizations (including NGOs, mitigation banks, public agencies, technology providers, and academic institutions) in a series of facilitated virtual meetings between January - April 2024. Below are the top three recommendations that we believe will save both permittee and Corps staff time and assist the Corps in meeting their goals and mission criteria.

Following the ‘top 3’ are edited tables of highest priority functionality needed, medium priority, and not critical but nice to have. We also include some resources and examples that could be helpful in RRS development. 

The Top 3 Recommendations for RRS

1. Incorporate the functionalities of Virginia’s Permitting Enhancement and Evaluation Platform (PEEP).

High priority, moderate feasibility. The most repeated RRS functionalities desired by our stakeholder group for permit applicants were: to have visibility on where the permit is in the process, an automatic timestamp the permit through the process, a target timeline, identification of who is working on the permit (the Corps, an external agency, the applicant), and project management tools incorporated like automated reminders of deadlines and automated reporting. Currently, the RRS ‘dashboard’ is minimal and does not incorporate these functionalities that we are aware of. When a permit has gone out for public comment &/or is issued, RRS should also provide transparency of permit information to the public (type of permit, project location polygon or centroid, location and amount of impact & mitigation associated with the permit, category of aquatic resource, timeline of permit, etc.). It's worth noting that the amount of permit and jurisdictional determination (JD) data available to the public via the Corps’ public viewer is significantly lower than what is accessible through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request or on the EPA’s JD viewer site. Our research found that the Corps only provided 10% of the permit data and 4% of the JD data compared to these alternate sources (over the same time period), indicating a disconnect in data provisioning to the public.

2. Create APIs (application programming interface).

High priority, easy to moderate feasibility. Stakeholders also indicated access of  data on issued permits, JDs, and mitigation via an API was one of the top priorities (note: this could be an alternative way of providing information to the public). API connectivity for the private sector to be able to inject information into RRS was also recommended. Stakeholders understood that the RRS was unlikely to “be all things for all people,” but APIs allow the ability to develop information products and services desired by different stakeholder groups. An analogy is the IRS allowing the private sector to develop services like TurboTax, rather than relying on the IRS itself to develop and continuously update a user-friendly and modern tax service. APIs are not prohibited by the Department of Defense. In fact, the DOD released an API Technical Guidance report in October 2023, and provides a list of current APIs for public DoD data (which does not include the API developed for RIBITS).

3. Integrate publicly available data.

High priority, easy feasibility. The Corps has already developed an internal National Regulatory Viewer tool that includes data like NWI, NHD, HUCs, aerial photos, NRCS soil survey maps, FEMA/FIRMS maps, EJ data, and perhaps other data. The group thought it would be a valuable and easy functionality to add to extract and attach these maps automatically to a permit, rather than have an applicant upload them individually

Additional RRS Recommendations not already noted above are below grouped below categorized as 1. Highest Priority, 2. Medium Priority, and 3. Not Critical but Nice to Have.

The lists below indicate the level of feasibility (E = easily feasible, M = moderately feasible, N= challenging or not feasible). We acknowledge that some of the recommendations are already planned by the Corps - these are denoted with a “(p)”. Note that the level of priority is the group’s priority but one organization or individual may feel a recommendation is a higher or lower priority.

1. Highest Priority (not ordered by importance)

  • Submission of mitigation bank and in-lieu fee (ILF) instrument (p) & include credit release requests (and status - pending, approved) (E - M)

  • RRS integration with RIBITS - available credits / ability to allow permittees to see / search for available credits to mitigate their project (E)

  • External agency role that will allow the Corps to share application data with Federal/state agencies (p) (E)

  • RRS interoperability with other agency applications / review capability (M)

  • For permits needing mitigation (/proposals of mitigation), links to available watershed plans / maps wetland/stream restoration priorities (M)

2. Medium Priority (not ordered by importance)

  • Create an aggregated, national dataset of spatial data of wetland delineations for AJDs or PJDs (reusable public data) (M)

  • Public notices automatically populated by RRSE - (M)

  • Tracking / reporting of: Performance on requirements of 2008 Rule / other Corps requirements (E - M)
    - proportion of mitigation from banks vs ILF vs PRM, portion of mitigation completed in the same watershed as the impact, linkage of mitigation to watershed plans, etc.
    - timeframe of MBI decisions
    - timeframe of other Corps permits (range/mean total time, agency/applicant processing time)

  • Ability to ask a question about the permit and have it be associated with the permit; tracking of responses / requests for change / chart of issues & resolution of issues (could aid in staff turnover). Potential for an AI chatbot to be trained on this.MSubmit FOIA request (p) [fewer FOIAs may be necessary if data is publicly available to to search / view / download] (M)

  • Ability for potentially affected communities to subscribe to public notices. Tracking measures of public participation / engagement. (M)

  • EJ maps/data overlay enabled/on by default (M)

  • Submission of public notice comments / export to Word/Excel (p) (E - M)

  • Tracking / reporting of: Checks to limit ‘gaming’ of reporting (E - M)

  • Automated / more objectively-based ‘completeness’ determination (E - M)

  • District-specific variability / modules (to account for variability of what is required in pre-application and application) (E)

  • Generally better archived data (E)

  • Monitoring data associated with mitigation of all types (bank, ILF, PRM) - make public, available to downloadNRRS interoperability with state jurisdictional waters (N)

3. Not Critical, but Nice to Have (not ordered by importance)

  • Public data schema for all aspects of data to allow for (and encourage) extensions of RSS driven by the regulated community (M)

  • Dynamic boundaries - allow applicants to change project boundary if project changes without having to resubmit application (M)

  • In a public viewer of permits, include context - maps of where wetlands are, where mitigation is (M)

  • In a public viewer of permits, create mapping / report function - for what is determined to be WOTUS (under what WOTUS definition), where permits are (N)

For the Corps’ consideration, there are internal permitting metrics (e.g., tracking of ‘backlog’ applications received but not started) that are suggested in the following report: Sample Metrics for Evaluating the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Environmental Permitting Systems (2018).

Other Resources or Examples that Could Help

We welcome further dialogue about these recommendations - for future iterations of the Corps’ RRS system or any other agency permitting system. Let us know if we can provide any further information!

Also, related but not specific to the Corps’ RRS… EPIC and the Federal of American Scientists published an Inventory of Environmental Permitting Tools. Lots of action here! 

The Restoration Economy Center, housed in the national nonprofit Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), aims to increase the scale and speed of high-quality, equitable restoration outcomes through policy change. Email becca[at]policyinnovation.org if interested in learning more, sign up for our newsletter, or consider supporting us!

Becca Madsen
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