The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) is a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice with a mission to provide leadership, resources, and solutions for creating safe, just, and engaged communities by providing financial and technical assistance to federal, state, local, and tribal justice systems.

TCG is currently supporting OJP with National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and related environmental and historic preservation compliance requirements for individual grant projects and with comprehensive NEPA program improvements. Our support includes outreach and technical assistance to applicants in processing NEPA compliance for hundreds of individual grant projects, programmatic NEPA analysis, development of project-specific environmental assessments, Section 7 and Section 106 consultations in support of project compliance, NEPA website enhancement, NEPA training for OJP staff, updates to OJP’s NEPA implementing regulations, and the identification of and recommendations for process efficiencies and improvements to the OJP NEPA program.

TCG’s work with OJP has greatly improved OJP’s NEPA compliance program and processes. For example, we developed a memorandum for the application of categorical exclusions (CATEXs) to grant funded activities for agency staff to clarify the existing CATEXs as they apply to agency activities so that staff can better understand and consistently apply the CATEX list. As part of our initial support, TCG eliminated the backlog of NEPA compliance documents to ensure prompt reviews to help grantees, particularly Tribal grantees, receive their funding sooner.

TCG’s technical assistance includes supporting the OJP NEPA Coordinators and applicants with sufficiency reviews of NEPA checklist compliance documents and environmental assessments (EAs) while also reviewing and providing recommendations on the environmental review timeline that BJA applicants and third parties use to develop EAs for their projects. TCG annually processes and reviews NEPA checklists and supporting documents for compliance, and reviews and provides comments and recommendations on individual EAs to ensure NEPA compliance. We also provide continuous tracking and coordination services for NEPA compliance checklists and EAs to ensure requirements are completed in a timely fashion, and provide weekly and monthly reporting to the NEPA Coordinators and contract COR.

TCG is also currently working directly with Tribal applicants from rural Alaska to ensure compliance for a number of new construction projects.  Our work includes the review of the grant application scope of work and project description, direct coordination with the applicant to obtain accurate and up to date project descriptions, locations and site information, recommendations for the correct type of compliance and the implicated laws (e.g. NEPA, ESA, §404, NHPA & RCRA), and, in some cases, the development of environmental assessments and associated compliance. Projects reviewed for BJA grantees range from small projects such as the construction of 500 square foot prefabricated buildings to major construction projects involving phased campus wide developments with multi-level buildings with associated parking garages and other ancillary facilities.