What to do about NEPA?

While, we at Oak Canyon believe in NEPA, there’s no doubt that it has problems. It’s expensive, it’s slow, and it can hold up the construction of necessary infrastructure. The US needs to build more transmission lines, more renewable energy facilities, more trains, more factories, more of everything to keep our economy competitive and to transition away from fossil fuels.

We can’t solve all of NEPA’s problems. But we can do something about its money and time issues. The reason NEPA compliance costs so much and takes so long is that it’s basically an artisanal process. You have highly educated (highly expensive) professionals working for weeks or months to make sure that their documents have all of the information they need to make them legally defensible. Each document follows the same pattern, but the unique conditions for each project make mass production impossible.

The advances in AI over the last year make it possible to increase the productivity of these professionals significantly. That’s where our NEPA tool, OakAI, comes in. First, you upload planning documents, environmental resources reports, and other information into the system. Immediately, you can talk to your documents. Want to know how many eligible archaeological sites there are in the study area? OakAI will get that to you in seconds. No more flipping through hundreds of pages of reports to find that one little fact.

OakAI can also generate sections of a categorical exclusion, environmental assessment, or environmental impact statement based on the documents you’ve uploaded. Want a quick purpose & need? OakAI only needs a couple of seconds to give you a rough draft to polish up. What about a description of your alternatives? Or a discussion of impacts to wetlands, historic buildings, or threatened & endangered species? OakAI will do it all.

And then, that most dreaded component of all: the public hearing. How many staff members do you have compiling public comments, sorting them, pulling out the threads of the comments, and preparing answers? Simply upload a spreadsheet of the public’s concerns along with a copy of your draft environmental document and OakAI will hand you back relevant answers in a downloadable format, ready to be reviewed, edited, and added to your final document.

We’re just starting out, so our tools won’t just kick out a full EA, polished, clean, and ready to go to the public. But, we will save you time and money. If you’re interested in bringing your NEPA compliance into the 21st Century, schedule a demonstration with us today.