On July 17, 2021, EPIC welcomed Melanie Vance, WSDOT Local Programs Environmental Manager, to host an educational webinar entitled, “Recognizing the Relationship between NEPA and ROW.”  Melanie started her career at Spokane County in 2001, and then joined WSDOT in 2008, leading projects involving environmental noise mitigation and environmental justice issues for infrastructure development projects. Today, Melanie ensures compliance with federal regulations on the local agency projects and oversees county-level NEPA compliance for local agencies in the Puget Sound region.  The program was presented as part of the “2021 EPIC University” educational series called “Essentials of Right of Way.”  The EPIC team came away from the webinar more informed about the nuances of NEPA compliance from project initiation through construction phases.  More importantly, the team is emboldened in it’s role to protect Environmental Justice populations from disproportionately adverse right of way impacts such as relocation impacts, acquisition burden, loss of business access, and loss of parking in infrastructure improvement projects.