NTIA Works on Breaking Broadband Permitting Barriers

NTIA Works on Breaking Broadband Permitting Barriers

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has recently designed a tool to assist the seven broadband grant programs it is managing with the challenges of permitting announced significant progress in removing permitting barriers to broadband deployments funded by Internet for All initiatives. The “Permitting and Environmental Information Application” is a publicly available GIS-based tool that NTIA developed to assist the industry with early identification of permit requirements and National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) considerations.

Different types of permits are required when crossing various land areas. Crossing federal lands requires a federal land managing agent permit, and crossing tribal land can require coordination with the tribe and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Every permit has NEPA obligations associated with federal funding. Where projects might run through the city or state-owned lands, there are other jurisdictions that have permitting actions as well as private ownership issues to negotiate. Deployment can also be challenging due to environmental aspects, such as running through lands with threatened or endangered species.

“We’ve been doing a lot of inter-agency collaboration,” said Jill Springer, Senior Policy Advisor for Permitting Chief Environmental Review and Permitting Officer Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth, NTIA. “My permitting team identified all of the federal lands, managing and permitting officials and fields and district offices in each of the seven BEAD regions, and we convened interagency Regional Broadband permitting meetings, calling together all of those folks to introduce the NTIA Internet for All grant programs, and to talk about how we can best collaborate to make permits. Reviews and application procedures efficient as these projects come online. We’ll also be, as a result of these conversations, establishing state-based permitting roundtables as a venue for resolving project-specific permitting issues at the earliest time possible and at the lowest level possible.”

The new NTIA interactive GIS permitting tool can help those getting ready to deploy fiber broadband better understand the land and permitting process they will be working on before they build there. It can also ensure that permits can be obtained before boots hit the ground to streamline productivity in the deployment process.

The NTIA website hosts the Permitting and Environmental Information Application tool under the resources tab, as well as the permitting and environmental application. The tool features a layered map, revealing key factors that must be considered during deployment, such as floodplains, wetlands, and coastal layers. Knowing these features can help make decisions between aerial and buried fiber deployment.

“The application was created to help with permitting, planning, and environmental review preparation efforts by providing access to multiple maps from publicly available sources including federal review, permitting, and resource agencies,” said Kelly Stone, GIS Specialist, NTIA.

And NTIA is working on providing more tools as well, taking from the Fast 41 permitting process and right-sizing it. “We just received funding from the Permitting Council,” said Springer. “What we propose to do for BEAD is to develop an environmental screening and permitting tracking tool. We are going to be taking that Fast 41 permitting dashboard and incorporating it into a tool for us to use to help eligible entities do a lot of the process pieces.”

To learn more about NTIA’s efforts to break permitting barriers and the Permitting and Environment Information Application tool, listen to the latest Fiber for Breakfast.

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