Under Hawaiʻi law, the decision-making authority concerning the acceptability of the environmental review documents is the purview of the first agency (the lead agency) to receive a permit application. In practice, it may be preferable to have this authority to determine adequacy of an Environmental Assessment (EA), or the need for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), reside with the agency having jurisdiction over the resource subject to the greatest project impacts, e.g., in the case of use of state lands and ocean waters, the DLNR.

General guidelines and advice on the preparation of the environmental review document are available from the Office of Environmental Quality Control (OEQC), DOH (see section on State Environmental Impact Statements). The OEQC also has an online, searchable archive of all EAs and EISs done in Hawaiʻi, organized by island, that is available for review to help educate the applicant on document requirements [http://Hawaii.gov/health/environmental/oeqc/index.html].

Once applicants have a general understanding of the permits required, it is desirable for the project personnel to meet with stakeholders, including government agencies, public organizations, non-governmental organization (NGOs) and members of the public that may be impacted by or have a strong interest in the project. These meetings are utilized to define environmental and other issues of concern to stakeholders that should be addressed in the EA/EIS. Two approaches have been used effectively by previous projects:

1.  For input from government agencies, either the lead agency or the applicant can organize a Scoping Meeting, where relevant agencies are invited to a meeting to discuss the proposed project and raise any potential issues that the environmental review should address.
2. For input from other organizations and members of the interested public, the applicant can organize one or more informational meetings to discuss the proposed project and receive input on issues of concern to address in the environmental review.

These stakeholder meetings should occur early in the planning and permitting process to allow for conducting any environmental studies that may be needed to collect data and identify any major obstacles to securing the site. Issues identified by the stakeholder meeting are used to prepare the environmental review and provide the essential information for the decision making process. Moreover, a thorough collection of information and preliminary analysis of issues will allow the single environmental review document to be comprehensive and address most, if not all, of the major issues posed by federal, state, and county governments, NGOs and the general public.

Preparation of a single comprehensive environmental review document efficiently provides more or less the same information to government agencies and the interested public at the same time to facilitate review. Further, it allows the applicant to consider simultaneous filing of federal and state permit applications, in the event that both types of permits will be required. In non-controversial projects this approach can save time and money.