[CPEO-MEF] ENCROACHMENT: GAO report on "DOD Efforts to Prevent and Mitigate Encroachment at Its Installations"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

DOD Efforts to Prevent and Mitigate Encroachment at Its Installations

U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO-17-86)
November, 2016

What GAO Found


The Department of Defense’s (DOD) processes for stationing, or determining where to locate units and assets consider incompatible land use. Specifically, the military departments have processes to determine how to satisfy military requirements while considering incompatible land use. DOD instructions further require that installations have master plans in place to manage incompatible land use issues, based on a strategic assessment of an installation’s mission and expected use. For the nine installations visited, GAO found these plans considered all or almost all of seven types of incompatible land use that GAO identified - historic assets, archeological assets, protected species, protected habitat, climate change, urban development, and airborne noise. 

DOD, the military services, and individual installations have a number of policies, procedures, and approaches to identify and mitigate incompatible land use concerns. These include broad-based efforts to identify and mitigate incompatible land use, such as the Joint Land Use Study (JLUS) program, and targeted efforts to identify and manage specific types of incompatible land use, such as the DOD Siting Clearinghouse for alternative energy projects near its installations. Regardless of the policies, procedures, or approaches utilized collaboration with external entities like state governments and local communities
is generally involved (see figure).

DOD guidance and selected installation actions to collaborate with external entities to mitigate incompatible land use are generally consistent with key considerations for implementing interagency collaborative mechanisms. GAO’s prior work has found that certain key considerations, such as establishing outcomes, accountability, and clarity of roles and responsibilities, benefit efforts to implement collaborative mechanisms. GAO’s analysis of DOD’s Joint Land Use Study Program Guidance Manual - DOD guidance that outlines a collaborative process for
evaluating incompatible land use issues around installations and developing recommendations to mitigate these issues - found that it was
consistent with the eight key considerations GAO had identified. Furthermore, GAO’s analysis of completed JLUS reports
from installations visited found the actions taken to complete the studies were also consistent with these key considerations.

...

For the original highlights page, the figure, and a link to the full report, see
http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/680973.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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