Ecological Services Term Agreements New York State Department of Transportation

The New York State Department of Transportation selected The Louis Berger Group, Inc. for a third four-year on-call services Term Agreement to provide ecological services to DOT Regions 8, 10 and 11 and several upstate regions. The type of services Berger has performed include the identification and delineation of state-regulated and federal-regulated wetlands, wetland functional assessments based on best-professional judgment, wetland permitting support under the NY State Freshwater Wetland Act and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, and wetland mitigation site selection, design and monitoring.  Other services performed include stream assessments, erosion control evaluation, threatened and endangered species surveys, identification and enumeration of wetland impacts from proposed road improvements, and evaluation of alternative alignments to avoid, minimize and reduce wetland impacts. Berger recently conducted a five-day training course for NYSDOT staff in the US Army Corps of Engineers 1987 Wetland Delineation Methodology. The training program provided the attendees with the technical background to identify, delineate and classify wetlands.

Berger has completed over 100 task orders under the concurrent contracts. Berger has performed wetland delineations, functional assessments and impact evaluations at sites throughout the Hudson Valley, the coastal plain, including the Pine Barrens of Long Island, the Catskills and other upstate regions.  In accordance with NYSDOT practice, Berger is performing wetland delineations for both state-regulated and federal-regulated wetlands following COE 1987 methodology. Berger also conducts a vegetative characterization of both wetland and upland habitats within the project area and prepares a map of the vegetative communities along the project alignment.