The Clark Group, LLC (TCG) supported the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (Climate-Smart), a funding opportunity created by the USDA to form partnerships with a diverse range of agricultural and under-served producers to finance climate-smart projects. These projects included sustainable agricultural and business practices and methods to verify the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
TCG provided extensive support to the USDA by offering our technical expertise to evaluate the impact of Climate-Smart pilot projects on the ecological and human environments. Our services included environmental consultation and managing the NEPA compliance process by triaging and reviewing grantees’ project descriptions.
Beyond evaluating the compliance needs for individual Climate-Smart projects, TCG reviewed grantee Environmental Evaluations (EEs), technical documents used to describe the project and the ecological and human environment surrounding the project site. We provided technical assistance to USDA’s partners that enabled them to successfully complete the required EE process. Our technical support reduced implementation delays for grant funding and ensured compliance with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service requirements.
TCG streamlined the EE review and approval process by developing a data management system that ensured consistent, secure, and usable EE data for all organizations and partners.
In total, TCG reviewed 1281 Environmental Evaluations across 36 states and one territory. See the map below for the range and count of Environmental Evaluations per state and territory.
Alongside our environmental work, TCG provided cultural resource compliance services to the USDA, including the development of a NHPA Section 106 consultation letter template and a database of SHPO requirements for each state. TCG also acted in a managerial capacity for cultural resource contractors and wrote a total of 20 desktop cultural resource reports.