EPA's Vessel General Permit and Small Vessel General

� An initial screening process that are designed to insure that proposals minimally comply
with statutory, regulatory, or policy requirements that are applicable to requests for
permits, licenses, or funding and
� Secondary screening processes that are designed to insure that an agency satisfies the
statutory, regulatory, or policy requirements or criteria that must be met before an agency
can issue a permit, license, or funding.
For example, the screening process the EPA applies to general permits includes reviews for
completeness; analyses for compliance with Clean Water Act (CWA) guidelines; compliance
with State water quality standards; compliance with toxic effluent standards; and compliance
with the requirements of section 7(a)(2) of the ESA.
Agency screening processes typically produce recommendations to agency decision-makers, who
have the authority to make final decisions on Agency Actions (see Figure 1, Box D3). Following
those decisions, the Action Agency, permittee, licensee, or funding recipient undertakes the
action, including any terms or conditions the Action Agency has attached (see Figure 1, Box
O1). The action produces a set of direct, indirect, and cumulative effects on the environment and
any living organisms that occur in or rely on the environment that is affected by the action (see
Figure 1, Box O2) and the condition of the environment changes in response to those effects (see
Figure 1, Box O3).
Figure 1 also displays a program that contains an audit function represented by a monitoring
component (Lines M1 to M4), a feedback component (Lines F1 to F4), and an information
gathering and evaluation component that informs a screening process (Box D2.1). The
monitoring component would collect empirical information on individual actions or a sample of
individual actions to (a) identify what action actually occurred for comparison with the action
that had been proposed and approved (implementation monitoring; see Figure 1, Line M1); (b)
identify which terms and conditions, if any, were satisfied, including any mitigation measures
that were required (implementation monitoring; see Figure 1, Line M1), (c) gather empirical
information on the action’s direct and indirect effects on the environment, including the
effectiveness of any mitigation measures that had been required (validation and compliance
monitoring; see Figure 1, Line M2), (d) gather the empirical evidence to determine whether or to
what degree the environment changed in response to those effects (see Figure 1, Line M3); and
(e) gather the empirical evidence sufficient to determine whether a proposal contributed to
environmental conditions that fail to meet program purposes and standards (compliance
monitoring; see Figure 1, Line M4). The feedback component evaluates empirical data collected
by monitoring and incorporates those data into agency decisions about prior or subsequent
actions (see Figure 1, Lines F1 through F4).
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