The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allocated $616 million in Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery funding to support long-term economic development, housing, and infrastructure recovery efforts following Hurricane Irma through the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity’s (DEO) Rebuild Florida Program.

NERIS team members worked directly with the Florida DEO Environmental Manager to identify knowledge gaps in order to develop a curriculum and conduct a four-part National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Compliance training for State Disaster Recovery Employees. The training covered all levels of the Environmental Review Record (ERR) associated with proposed economic development, housing, and infrastructure projects.

Each ERR includes:

- Generation of ArcGIS Maps for each environmental resource impact evaluation.
- Review of the Federal Enforcement and Compliance History Online database to determine if releases or violations of environmental regulations including RCRA, NPDES, AIR, TRIS, ACRES, NPL, and TSCA have been reported and to determine compliance status with active facilities.
- Review of State databases for all Superfund, Brownfield, Petroleum, and Other Waste Cleanup sites. Environmental write ups for each site indicate if a toxic release has been reported, the status of the release, and if groundwater or soil contamination is present.
- Consultation with the State Historic Preservation Office by historians that meet or exceed the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Treatment of Historic Properties.
- Determination whether homes are eligible/ineligible to continue with the program based on environmental characteristics of the project location such as wetlands, endangered species, and coastal management zones.