Water and Environmental Programs

Welcome to the Environmental Section of the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), Water and Environmental Programs, Engineering and Environmental Staff's website. This website contains reference material that will assist Agency staff and applicants meet environmental review and compliance requirements.

In accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), RUS must consider the environmental effects of each of its proposals on the human environment. In 1978, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) promulgated regulations to implement the procedural provisions of NEPA. In order to implement NEPA at the agency level, the CEQ directed agencies to adopt procedures to supplement their regulations. RUS's procedures are found at 7 CFR 1794. These regulations classify the agency's actions into levels of environmental review (i.e., Categorical Exclusions, Environmental Assessments, or Environmental Impact Statements) and describe agency-specific implementing procedures. To further the intent of NEPA and the CEQ procedures, RUS incorporates all of its environmental compliance activities, including the National Historic Preservation Act, under its NEPA review umbrella.

RUS administers its programs through USDA, Rural Development State Offices. Each Rural Development State Office has a State Environmental Coordinator (SEC) who provides oversight and direction in the implementation of RUS's environmental review responsibilities at the state level. For specific questions related to a proposal in a particular state, we encourage you to contact that state's SEC.

For all project proposals that require construction, RUS normally requires its applicants to prepare Environmental Reports concurrently with Preliminary Engineering Reports. This requirement meets the CEQ's intent whereby agencies "integrate the NEPA process with other planning at the earliest possible time to insure that planning and decisions reflect environmental values". In order to outline the types of information RUS needs in the Environmental Reports, the Agency prepared and issued a series of RUS Bulletins.

As stated earlier, this website contains reference, guidance, and training materials to assist Rural Development staff and applicants to RUS programs for evaluating the environmental implications of proposals submitted to the Agency. Resources include an Environmental Library that contains text versions of pertinent environmental statutes, regulations, Executive Orders and other common guidance documents. In addition, this website contains an Environmental Compliance Course Catalog that lists the interactive, multimedia training the agency has developed on the environmental issues and concerns we consider in our environmental compliance and review activities. We encourage you to take advantage of all the resources on this website.