THE OPPORTUNITY

As America’s energy and sewer needs increase and as its linear infrastructure ages, utility providers are continually upgrading, expanding, or replacing linear delivery systems such as gas pipelines, electrical transmission, and sewers. Our highway system also requires constant maintenance and expansion as growing populations spur a need for road widening projects and other improvements.

THE CHALLENGE

Large-scale linear infrastructure projects sometimes cross municipal boundaries and pass through multiple regulatory jurisdictions. For example, a given transmission line project in New Jersey might need to satisfy the cultural resource requirements of the State, the Pinelands Commission, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, among others. This creates a complex tangle of rules that requires experience and technical expertise to sort out. The expansive geographic scope of these projects makes efficiency crucial to avoiding schedule issues, but their linear nature creates opportunities for efficiency that do not exist in projects that involve larger footprints of disturbance and areas of potential effect.

THE PS&S SOLUTION

PS&S’s cultural resource management staff have decades of experience with the applicable regulations and an excellent working relationship with review agency staff. By meeting with review officials in advance of our investigations, we can work out protocols that eliminate unnecessary effort and unexpected future situations that might cause delays. By very carefully constraining and fully understanding areas that will necessarily be affected and others that can be protected, we can plan for the protection rather than the investigation of archaeological and historic properties. Our approach is to help clients avoid affecting archaeological sites and historic buildings wherever possible rather than conducting potentially costly and unnecessary phased investigations. In addition, our cultural resource specialists have developed efficient means of addressing linear infrastructure projects. These methods have helped us complete multiple pipeline, transmission line, storm, sanitary sewer, and road improvement-related investigations spanning several states – on time and under budget.