Focus on Infrastructure and the Environment

The Conservation Leadership Network hosted two seminal events this year, both highlighting the critical relationship between infrastructure and the environment.

National Summit on Infrastructure and the Environment

This Fall, The Conservation Fund hosted the National Summit on Infrastructure and the Environment: Better Outcomes through Better Process, September 29th to October 1st at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV. For the first time, this Summit brought together more than 160 public and private officials from the energy, transportation, and water sectors to engage in constructive dialogue on how to improve the permitting process for critical infrastructure. This unprecedented convening was orchestrated in partnership with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Edison Electric Institute, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies – and by consultations with top Federal officials from such agencies as the US Department of Interior, US Army Corps of Engineers, Council on Environmental Quality, and Federal Highway Administration, with leaders from state government and conservation organizations.
Presentations were made by leaders from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the US Army Corps of Engineers, as well as cabinet level leadership from Maryland and New Mexico, and top representation from a number of energy production (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.), energy transmission, and transportation companies. Results from the Summit and other related information can be found on the National Summit webpage.

Looking Beyond the Transportation Footprint Meeting

The Conservation Fund hosted the Transportation Research Board’s Environmental Analysis and Transportation committee’s summer meeting in July 2009. The theme of the meeting was, Looking Beyond the Transportation Footprint: New Partners and New Scales, and was successful in attracting over 200 participants with approximately 50% of those coming from resource and regulatory partner agencies. The event was designed to be highly interactive to capitalize on this historic number of partner agencies present at the meeting and was comprised of plenary sessions, discussion forums and a ‘town hall meeting’ with top administration officials from the Council on Environmental Quality, U.S. EPA, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and West Virginia DOT (representing state DOTs). Issues discussed during this meeting ranged from climate change and NEPA analysis to effective processes for conducting regional-scale landscape-level analysis and planning for infrastructure projects, to U.S. EPA’s new transportation water quality guidance to new tools currently under development by the U.S. FWS.
The event was sponsored by AASHTO, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Highway Administration, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA Forest Service, Maryland State Highway Administration, and the West Virginia DOT Division of Highways. Beyond sponsoring the event, these agencies partnered to offer the Committee’s first Inter-Agency Outstanding Partnership Awards. Award winners included the Inter-County Connector, the Interagency Review Team for the Northwest Florida Water Management District’s Umbrella, Watershed-based Regional Mitigation Plan, and the Libby North Corridor Planning Study: Highway 567/Pipe Creek Road
This was the first time that the committee’s meeting was hosted by a non-governmental organization, The Conservation Fund, and was held at the home of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC). Presentations from the meeting can be found on TRB's website.