Discipline reports are prepared to document environmental studies and investigations. When a project will have little impact on, or generate little public interest in, an element of the environment, that conclusion can be documented in the Environmental Review Summary (ERS) and environmental review document or Environmental Classification Summary (ECS) prepared for the project. Discipline reports form the basis of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), Environmental Assessment (EA), or Documented Categorical Exclusion (DCE).

Many of the chapters in Part 4 of the WSDOT Environmental Procedures Manual (EPM) contain guidance to help determinine when a discipline report is needed for a project. The following discipline report checklists, decision matrices and templates are available to guide the development of your reports:

Discipline Report Checklists:

Air Quality	Land Use
Cultural Resources	Relocation
Economic Elements	Traffic Noise
Energy	Vegetation
Fisheries Resources	Visual Impacts
Floodplain	Surface Water
Geology and Soils	Wetlands
Groundwater	Wildlife

Discipline Report decision matrices and templates:

Economic Effects matrix (pdf 59 kb)		template (pdf 53 kb)
Environmental Justice matrix (pdf 64 kb)		template (pdf 56 kb
Fisheries Resources template (pdf 421 kb)
Social Effects matrix (pdf 66 kb)		template (pdf 53 kb)
Vegetation template (pdf 47 kb)
Wildlife template (pdf 79 kb)

   
Once a discipline report is prepared, it gets reviewed for sufficiency. This form may be used for coordinated review of discipline reports. It is helpful to give instructions (pdf 21k) to your reviewers to ensure consistency of review.

The WSDOT Environmental Services Office maintains a list of discipline specialists who can help other WSDOT offices and local transportation agencies in the review of discipline reports.

You can find examples of various reports on the NEPA / SEPA Guidance webpage.