EPA's Vessel General Permit and Small Vessel General

for these components of an action); we then determine whether listed species or designated
critical habitat are likely to be exposed to those potential stressors; we estimate how listed
species or designated critical habitat are likely to respond to any exposure; then we conclude by
estimating the risks those responses pose to the individuals, populations, and species or
designated critical habitat that are likely to be exposed.
General permits authorized by Federal agencies apply to activities over large geographic areas
over long periods of time, with substantial uncertainty about the number, location, timing,
frequency, and intensity of specific activities those programs authorize, fund, or carry out. Our
traditional approaches to section 7 consultations, which focus on the specific effects of a specific
proposal, are not designed to deal with the spatial and temporal scales and level of uncertainty
that is typical of consultations on general permits.
Instead of trying to adapt traditional consultation approaches to programmatic consultations, we
have developed an assessment framework that specifically allows us to help Federal agencies
insure that their programs comply with the requirements of section 7(a)(2) of the ESA as
described in the Interagency Endangered Species Consultation Handbook (U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and NMFS 1998; Chapter 5). Our assessment framework for general permits
first assesses whether the general permits are likely to adversely affect listed species or critical
habitats by estimating exposure and response, as described above for traditional consultations. If
listed species and critical habitats are likely to be adversely affected we then assess how the
permit is structured to comply with section 7(a)(2).
Specifically, our programmatic consultations on general permits examine the decision-making
processes that are integrated into Federal Agency programs to determine whether those decisionmaking
processes are likely to insure that specific actions the agency authorizes, funds, or carries
out through the program comply with the requirements of section 7(a)(2). That is, during
programmatic consultations we ask whether or to what degree the Federal action agency (in this
case, EPA) has structured its proposed general permit so that the agency (1) collects the
information necessary to allow it to know or reliably estimate the probable individual and
cumulative consequences of its actions on listed resources; (2) evaluates the information it
collects to assess how its actions have affected endangered species, threatened species, and
designated critical habitat specifically; and (3) use its authorities to bring those activities into
compliance with the requirements of section 7(a)(2) of the ESA, if the information it collects
suggests that it is necessary. Here, “permit structure” refers to the decision-making processes,
applications of standards and criteria (including standards of information and treatment of
uncertainty), feedback loops and internal audits, and controls (including permit conditions) that
agencies rely upon to fulfill their obligations under the ESA.
Figure 1 displays a normative model of a decision-making process that includes these program
elements and feedback loops. The process trigger on the left-hand side of the figure (Box D1)
might represent an application from a prospective permittee or licensee, a request for prospective
funding, or a prospective proposal to be undertaken by a Federal Agency. These process triggers
are typically subjected to two screening processes (Box D2):
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