Book excerpt: The numbers of environmental laws and regulations have continued to grow in the United States, making compliance with these regulations increasingly difficult. Environmental assessments became a way to determine operational consistency and compliance with current environmental regulations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has adopted an environmental compliance program that identifies compliance problems before they are cited as violations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Beginning in 1993, the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, in cooperation with FWS, began research on this handbook. The concept was to combine the Code of Federal Regulations with good management practices and risk management issues into a series of checklists that show legal requirements and specific items of operations to review. This handbook is continually updated to address new environmental compliance laws and regulations.