Notice of Intent To Prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the Proposed Relocation of the Ioannis A. Lougaris VA Medical Center Services and Facilities in Reno, Nevada

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS <SUBJECT>Notice of Intent To Prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the Proposed Relocation of the Ioannis A. Lougaris VA Medical Center Services and Facilities in Reno, Nevada</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of Veterans Affairs. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of Intent to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, open a public scoping period, and hold public scoping meetings. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This Notice provides information to Federal, state, and local agencies; Native American tribes; and other interested persons regarding VA's intent to prepare a Programmatic EIS (PEIS) to evaluate the potential environmental impacts for the proposed relocation of the VA Sierra Nevada Health Care System (VASNHCS) Ioannis A. Lougaris VA Medical Center (Reno VAMC) services and facilities in Reno, Nevada. Programmatic National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents are used to assess the environmental impacts of proposed policies, plans, programs, or projects for which subsequent actions will be implemented based on the programmatic analyses, providing the foundation for subsequent additional analysis of specific actions that “tier” from the programmatic document. Tiering allows an agency to eliminate repetitive discussions of the same issues, focus on the actual issues ripe for decision, and exclude from consideration issues already decided or not yet ripe for environmental review. Programmatic NEPA analysis is appropriate in cases where an agency is adopting a large multi-phased program, plans or suite of projects, allowing an agency to make informed decisions timed to coincide with meaningful points in agency planning and decision making. Such is the case with the proposed relocation of the VASNHCS Reno VAMC services and facilities in Reno, Nevada ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> project specific siting/construction/operation of necessary services and supporting facilities, leasing needs, and site opportunities). The analyses for these actions will be broadly discussed in the programmatic document (PEIS) and the specific analyses deferred to the subsequent tiered NEPA document(s) when ripe for environmental review. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> VA invites interested agencies, organizations, Native American tribes, and members of the public to submit comments to inform VA on the significant issues to be analyzed in depth in the PEIS ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> range of actions, alternatives, environmental impacts). The public scoping period starts with the publication of this Notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . To ensure sufficient time to consider issues identified during the public scoping period, comments should be submitted by one of the methods listed under <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> no later than August 4, 2025. VA plans to hold public scoping meetings at the City of Reno McKinley Arts & Cultural Center, located at 925 Riverside Dr, Reno, Nevada 89503 on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. and on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, at 9:00 a.m. VA anticipates releasing the Draft PEIS for a 45-day public review and comment period in late summer 2026. VA will notify stakeholders via email/mail, publish a notice of availability of the Draft PEIS in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and the Reno Gazette-Journal, and solicit comments at that time. Following the close of the Draft PEIS public comment period, VA will prepare the Final PEIS and Record of Decision (ROD). VA anticipates issuing the Final PEIS for public review in late winter of 2026 within 2 years of the publication of this Notice and signing the ROD in early spring 2027. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Except as provided below, comments received before the close of the comment period will be available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> for public viewing, inspection, or copying, including any personally identifiable or confidential business information that is included in a comment. All comments received before the close of the comment period will be posted on the following website as soon as possible after they have been received: <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> VA will not post on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> public comments that make threats to individuals or institutions or suggest that the commenter will take actions to harm the individual. VA encourages individuals not to submit duplicative comments. We will post acceptable comments from multiple unique commenters even if the content is identical or nearly identical to other comments. Any public comment received after the comment period's closing date is considered late and will not be considered. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mr. Patrick Read, Environmental Engineer, Office of Construction and Facilities Management (003C2), VA, <E T="03">VACOEnvironment@va.gov.</E> Reference “Reno Programmatic EIS VA PEIS-029-15-VHA-1737045243” in your correspondence. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Pursuant to the NEPA of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4331 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); VA NEPA Implementing Guidance (38 CFR part 26); Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966 (54 U.S.C. Part 306108); and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) Procedures for the Protection of Historic Properties (36 CFR part 800 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), VA intends to prepare a PEIS for the proposed relocation of Reno VAMC services and facilities in Reno, Nevada. In addition, VA intends to use the NEPA analysis process to consider impacts to historic properties traditionally addressed through 54 U.S.C. 306108 of the NHPA and its implementing regulations codified in 36 CFR part 800 (collectively “Section 106”). This process, referred to as substitution, is described in 36 CFR 800.8(c) and the NEPA and NHPA: A Handbook for Integrating NEPA and Section 106 published by the ACHP and Council on Environmental Quality. A copy of NEPA and NHPA: A Handbook for Integrating NEPA and Section 106 Synopsis is typically posted online at the ACHP domain, but is currently under revision and unavailable for reference here. The VASNHCS serves Veterans within 20 counties in Northern Nevada and Northeastern California with the largest population centered around Reno, Nevada. Over 47,000 enrolled Veterans reside within the Reno area. The Reno VAMC, which opened in 1939 and is located at 975 Kirman Avenue in Reno, Nevada, currently provides all inpatient VA care within VASNHCS and a large portion of the outpatient care due to its proximity to the region's Veteran population center. The demand for VA outpatient services, mental health services, and Community Living Center (nursing home) beds in the region is projected to grow significantly over the next 20 years. The existing Reno VAMC campus lacks the necessary infrastructure, acreage, as well as modern and seismically safe facilities to meet the demands of the VASNHCS Veteran population. As such, VA Office of Construction and Facility Management (CFM) completed a feasibility study in 2020 to develop options for the relocation of VASNHCS services and facilities and potential replacement of the existing Reno VAMC. Earlier VA studies recognized that the existing VAMC infrastructure is inadequate, aging, and unable to expand as necessary to serve the needs of the Northern Nevada Veteran population and corresponding health care services growth in the region. The feasibility study assessed a range of potential courses of action related to the viability of retaining the VAMC at its current location, disposing of the existing VAMC, and development of a new VAMC on yet-to-be-determined parcel(s) within a 10-mile radius of the existing Reno VAMC, and other options including potential development on adjacent property and/or a partial relocation of services and leasing considerations. The feasibility study identified potential options for relocation of health care services and the renovation and/or replacement of the existing VAMC facilities to meet the needs of existing and projected future Veteran population in the greater Northern Nevada area. In November of 2023, VA's Office of Real Property (ORP) conducted a Market Survey to identify the viability of sites for the potential relocation of the existing Reno VAMC facilities and VASNHCS health care services. During VA's market research, six properties within a 10-mile radius of the existing Reno VAMC were identified, evaluated, and prioritized by the Market Survey Team (MST). Site visits were conducted including voting and non-voting members of the MST as well as VA technical support staff. A consensus meeting was held to discuss the sites, taking into consideration catchment area, distance to VASNHCS, access to public transportation, access to food and beverage retail services, availability of utilities, environmental, historic, flood zone, wetlands, planned development, adjacent properties, and any other relevant market conditions in the public records. As a result of the market survey efforts, three potentially viable sites were identified by the MST; however, of the three sites, VA received only a single expression of interest from one interested party. That expression of interest was for the site located on the northern portion of the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) campus. VA is in the process of additional site exploration and validation as part of the NEPA scoping process, valid sites identified and offered to VA through this additional effort will be included for analysis in the PEIS, if applicable. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Purpose and Need</HD> The purpose of the proposed relocation of VASNHCS Reno VAMC services and facilities is to provide exceptional health ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━