The City of Chicago is the aviation crossroads of North America. To meet the challenges of maintaining this status, the City is undertaking major development activities to upgrade the infrastructure and help alleviate flight delays at its two hub airports, O'Hare International and Midway International. For several years, Tetra Tech has provided environmental compliance and regulatory support services to the Chicago Department of Aviation (DOA) to ensure that all environmental issues are addressed during construction and development projects both airports.

The objective of the work is to ensure that all capital improvement-related construction and development projects, tenant projects, and operations and maintenance (O&M) projects are conducted in compliance with environmental regulatory programs and that environmental compliance and permitting does not delay or otherwise impede airport development. Tetra Tech has worked closely with DOA staff to:

• Coordinate environmental reviews and oversight activities with numerous architectural, construction, and development contractors
• Provide a single clearinghouse of environmental information and recommendations on environmental issues
• Develop a checklist-based project review system that comprehensively examines environmental issues for individual projects and summarizes environmental issues and recommendations for DOA staff and the development contractors
• Create a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based environmental information management system to gather data on all environmental issues at O’Hare and Midway

With the acceleration of the O’Hare Airport expansion, a proposed $15 billion effort, Tetra Tech has provided support to the land acquisition program by reviewing due diligence documents. We developed demolition and remediation budgets for the northwest acquisition area where more than 50 businesses and homes have been acquired and assessed. As a follow-up to the initial work, Tetra Tech has developed and implemented a demolition oversight program for the acquired parcels to ensure compliance with environmental regulations and permits.