§ 26.70 Programmatic NEPA documents.
(a) Programmatic NEPA documents allow VA to conduct broad or holistic evaluations of effects or policy alternatives, evaluate widely applicable measures, or avoid duplicative analysis by considering all or some of the environmental effects of a policy, program, plan, group of projects or related types of projects, national or regional actions, or otherwise related actions. Programmatic NEPA documents support efficiency of NEPA review at the site-, action-, and project-specific level. VA may evaluate the proposal(s) in one of the following ways:
(1) Geographically, including actions occurring in the same general location, such as body of water, region, or metropolitan area.
(2) Generically, including actions that have relevant similarities, such as common timing, effects, alternatives, methods of implementation, media, or subject matter.
(3) By stage of technological development.
(b) Consistent with section 108 of NEPA (42 U.S.C. 4336b), after completing a programmatic NEPA document, VA may rely on that document for five years if there are not substantial new circumstances or information about the significance of adverse effects that bear on the analysis. After five years, as long as VA reevaluates the analysis in the programmatic NEPA document and any underlying assumption to ensure reliance on the analysis remains valid and briefly documents its reevaluation and explains why the analysis remains valid considering any new and substantial information or circumstances, VA may continue to rely on the document.
(c) VA need not wait until the initiation of a specific project to begin a programmatic review.
(d) VA may prepare a NEPA analysis specific to a unique program or project that has aspects different from or not sufficiently evaluated within a larger programmatic analysis. To tier an analysis to a previous programmatic EIS or EA, VA must:
(1) Incorporate the programmatic EIS or EA by reference in the tiered analysis, and
(2) Analyze all specific reasonably foreseeable environmental effects and a reasonable range of alternatives not covered at the programmatic level.