Houston and EL Paso, TX; and Las Cruces, NM NASA Johnson Space Center

NEPA Programmatic Environmental Assessment and Supplemental Environmental Assessment Documentation for NASA Johnson Space Center’s Master Plan

As a task under Straughan’s environmental services contract, Straughan prepared the NEPA Programmatic Environmental Assessment Documentation for NASA Johnson Space Center’s Master Plan and subsequent Supplemental Environmental Assessment.

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Our Approach

Straughan prepared a Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) for the proposed update of the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) Operations Directorate, Planning and Integration Office’s 2016 Master Plan. The Master Plan included four separate districts: JSC Main Campus, Sonny Carter Training Facility, Ellington Field (all in the Houston, TX area) which includes the El Paso Forward Operating Location in El Paso, TX, and the White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, NM. The PEA includes an environmental analysis of JSC’s 20-year revitalization strategy for constructing new state-of-the-art installations, renovating critical infrastructure, and vacating and/or demolishing (deconstructing) non-essential installations in order to support core capabilities, meet mission requirements, and respond effectively to mission changes.

For this project, Straughan conducted a review of all pertinent documents to determine the existing conditions for many environmental resources including all relevant NEPA or environmental planning documents that were available through the NASA Environmental Tracking System. We prepared the NEPA Checklist and a Description of Proposed Actions and Alternatives (DOPAA), the Preliminary Draft Master Plan PEA, Preliminary Draft Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI), Draft PEA, Draft FONSI, Final PEA, and Final FONSI. We ensured that all work was compliant with the most current applicable environmental laws, executive orders, NASA policies, NEPA regulations and guidance documents and complied with all requirements for legal public notices.

Subsequently, Straughan prepared a Supplemental Environmental Assessment, necessary to incorporate changes that were made as part of the 2019 JSC Master Plan Update. The previous JSC Master Plan (2016) aimed to reduce the footprint of the four districts from 4,826,829 sf to 4,319,163 sf by 2036, a reduction of 10.5%. The JSC Master Plan 2019 updates would further reduce the built area across the JSC installations to 3,602,520 sf, a reduction of over 25% by 2038.