Environmental Impact Statement Research Articles

Environmental Reviews and Case Studies: Ultimate Streamlining: Making National Environmental Policy Act Documents as Small as the Law Will Allow

The smallest possible National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) document is one that cannot be made more streamlined. A NEPA document could not be more streamlined than to present eight elements of essential information as outlined in this article. Neither an environmental assessment nor an environmental impact statement would include a distinct, separate no-action alternative. Instead, today's situation would be extended to the same point in the future, for purposes of comparison, as are the action alternatives. NEPA documents for projects would not develop alternatives to the proposal. Instead, NEPA documents would only develop alternatives that accomplish the same thing as intended by the proposed alternative. An environmental assessment would have no alternatives except for mitigating actions not already included in the proposed action. NEPA documents would not include exhaustive lists of possible environmental and other social and cultural consequences. Instead, relevance would determine which of thes...

Application of a large-screen immersive visualisation system to demonstrate sustainable mining practices principles

Can large-screen visualisation and simulation technology be utilised to depict sustainable mining practices? The system described here provides an opportunity to experience a mine site and the surrounding area via visualisation and simulation. The system presents sustainable mining concepts that must be managed at a mine site surrounded by a national park. The system includes historic and current data and perspectives from mine site, environmental and local personnel. All information must be assessed against an original environmental impact statement and conclusions be drawn upon how the mine has developed. Knowledge gained is transferred to a new site, and issues must be resolved to the satisfaction of all stakeholders. The paper summarises the system and reports outcomes of a trial deployment. The results are encouraging, and the system may prove to be a useful tool for community engagement and mine planning on future projects.

Public participation and written submissions: A transport infrastructure planning case study

Written submissions or comments as a response on an EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) rank as one of the most common forms of public participation. Within public participation research there appears to be an international dearth of knowledge concerning such written submissions. The possible impact of such responses on an EIS is – with few exceptions – seldom put in focus. The aim in the present brief communication is to study one aspect of public participation within transport infrastructure planning, namely the role of written submissions sent to the applicant by individuals, Non-governmental organisations, companies and authorities. By comparing 34 written submissions with road planning documents (including EIS) the impact of the public views has been analysed in a south Swedish case study. At a time when the new Environmental Code only had been in force for less than one year, it does not appear as if the Road Administration’s regional office accepted most of the written submissions just to show that the new regulation concerning participation had a direct impact on the planning. Sweden’s long tradition of public access to official documents may explain why written submissions as one aspect of public participation worked well in the E18 highway planning process, because civil servants have long been taught to promptly furnish information and guidance, as well as to giving advice and other assistance to individuals in matters concerning an authority’s activity. This study shows, then, that – if properly managed by the developer’s street-level staff – the use of written submissions may improve the EIS from a stakeholder perspective and also make the stakeholders feel they are being taken seriously.

Application of AIS data in service vessel activity description in the Gulf of Mexico

Offshore exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is supported by a large number of service vessels characterized by complex logistical patterns, a large number of shorebases and demand points across an expansive geographic area, and dynamic time-varying activities. No quantitative data is available on the spatial and temporal distributions of service vessel activity in the GOM, and therefore environmental impacts from offshore leasing plans cannot be distinguished. It is this ‘information gap’ in support of Environmental Impact Statements that is the motivation for this analysis. Automatic Identification System data is used in a proof-of-concept to evaluate offshore service vessel activity in the GOM during June 2009. Vessel events are identified and aggregated by port, area block, vessel type and event class. In total, 46 276 arrivals and departures between onshore and offshore locations in the GOM were recorded. Vessel movements between ports were the most active and a large portion of these events are attributed to towing vessels and tug boats. Offshore support vessels and crewboats recorded the most vessel events in offshore areas. A summary of the empirical results are presented along with the key aspects of data processing, evaluation challenges and limitations of analysis.

Statistics of Extremes in Oil Spill Risk Analysis

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWH) in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. After DWH, key questions were asked: What is the likelihood that a similar catastrophic oil spill (with a volume over 1 million barrels) will happen again? Is DWH an extreme event or will it happen frequently in the future? The extreme value theory (EVT) has been widely used in studying rare events, including damage from hurricanes, stock market crashes, insurance claims, flooding, and earthquakes. In this paper, the EVT is applied to analyze oil spills in the U.S. outer continental shelf (OCS). Incorporating the 49 years (1964-2012) of OCS oil spill data, the EVT is capable of describing the oil spills reasonably well. The return period of a catastrophic oil spill in OCS areas is estimated to be 165 years, with a 95% confidence interval between 41 years and more than 500 years. Sensitivity tests indicate that the EVT results are relatively stable. The results of this study are very useful for oil spill risk assessment, contingency planning, and environmental impact statements on oil exploration, development, and production.

The Determination of Main Obstacles for the Developing of Highquality Documentation during EIA Process on Natura 2000 Sites

Abstract The issues of protection and management of biodiversity has become one of main environmental policy tasks in Europe and elsewhere. As an application of precautionary principles the EU member states are required to assess projects and plans which alone or in combination with other plans or projects are likely to have significant negative effects on Natura 2000 sites. Several EU provisions set out the obligations for such assessment (the Birds and Habitat Directives, EIA and SEA Directives). One of the key steps in the assessment process is to carry out the EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) the final outcome of the assessment. If there is possibility of significant negative effects on Natura 2000 sites, the result of the process also has to be a part of EIS. The main goal of this study was to find out, what are the practitioners´ opinions and attitudes on the quality of EIS in Slovakia, especially in the case when the assessment process is related to Natura 2000 sites. Because it often involves practitioners from a very wide range of disciplinary and professional backgrounds, the contribution tries to show to what extent does the professional background or practitioners working positions influence their perception of EIS quality.

Environmental Effects Monitoring in Sydney Harbor During Remediation of One of Canada's Most Polluted Sites: A Review and Lessons Learned

This article reviews a comprehensive marine environmental effects monitoring program (MEEMP) comprised of components capable of detecting changes in the marine environment over short or extended temporal scales during remediation of one of Canada's most polluted sites at the Sydney Tar Ponds. The monitoring components included: water and sediment quality, amphipod toxicity testing, mussel tissue, crab hepatopancreas tissue, and benthic community assessments. The MEEMP was designed to verify the impact predictions for the remediation project (i.e., no immediate damage to the marine ecosystem through remediation activities). Some components were capable of providing conclusive data (e.g., sediment and water quality), while others only yielded data that were inconclusive or difficult to attribute to remediation activities (e.g., intertidal community assessments and amphipod toxicity testing). Components that provided only inconclusive results or were difficult to attribute to remediation activities were discontinued, resulting in substantial cost savings during the project, but without compromising the overall objectives of the program, which was to monitor for potential adverse environmental effects of remediation on the marine environment in Sydney Harbor and to verify environmental effects predictions made in the Environmental Impact Statement for the project. The rationale for discontinuing certain MEEMP components and discussion of conclusive results are incorporated into “lessons learned” for environmental remediation practitioners and regulators working on similar large‐scale multiyear remediation projects. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Acting with No Regret: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective of Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Defense Council

In Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Defense Council, 490 U.S. 360, 371 (1989), the Supreme Court held that the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) requires agencies to supplement environmental impact statements (EIS) upon discovering “new and significant” information. In the 25 years since Marsh, courts have often considered whether an agency should be enjoined from acting because its EIS does not adequately consider new and significant information. But, because “new and significant” information is not precisely defined, and because the circuit courts of appeals are split on how to review supplementation claims, NEPA practitioners face considerable uncertainty about when supplementation is required. This article provides NEPA practitioners with a roadmap for supplementation by (1) reviewing cases to determine what information is actually “new and significant” in practice and (2) examining what procedural steps an agency should take to evaluate new information. Generally, this article concludes that new information showing a previously-unconsidered but severe environmental impact will be significant but information that is similar to that previously considered, is vague or speculative, does not undermine important assumptions in the EIS, challenges common sense, or will be considered in future environmental reviews is not significant. And when considering new information, agencies should document their review, consult with established experts, directly respond to the new information, seek public input, and hire outside experts, when necessary. Armed with this roadmap, NEPA practitioners can better define, examine, and address information and its significance. With a better understanding of what information is significant, NEPA practitioners can comply with NEPA and Marsh and act with no regret.

Road ecology in environmental impact assessment

Transport infrastructure has a wide array of effects on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and road and railway networks are increasingly being associated with a loss of biodiversity worldwide. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) are two legal frameworks that concern physical planning, with the potential to identify, predict, mitigate and/or compensate transport infrastructure effects with negative impacts on biodiversity. The aim of this study was to review the treatment of ecological impacts in environmental assessment of transport infrastructure plans and projects. A literature review on the topic of EIA, SEA, biodiversity and transport infrastructure was conducted, and 17 problem categories on the treatment of biodiversity were formulated by means of a content analysis. A review of environmental impact statements and environmental reports (EIS/ER) produced between 2005 and 2013 in Sweden and the UK was then conducted using the list of problems as a checklist. The results show that the treatment of ecological impacts has improved substantially over the years, but that some impacts remain problematic; the treatment of fragmentation, the absence of quantitative analysis and that the impact assessment study area was in general delimited without consideration for the scales of ecological processes. Actions to improve the treatment of ecological impacts could include improved guidelines for spatial and temporal delimitation, and the establishment of a quantitative framework including tools, methods and threshold values. Additionally, capacity building and further method development of EIA and SEA friendly spatial ecological models can aid in clarifying the costs as well as the benefits in development/biodiversity tradeoffs.

Build Airport Capacity or Manage Flight Demand? How Regional Planners Can Lead American Aviation Into a New Frontier of Demand Management

Problem, research strategy, and findings: To address air traffic congestion, airports can manage flight demand or expand capacity; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires an environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate feasible alternatives to capacity expansion. The FAA also funds regional planning agencies to conduct optional regional aviation systems plans (RASPs). We study the extent to which airports investigate demand management in lieu of increasing capacity and if RASPs play a role in doing so. Of the 17 EISs for major airport capacity expansions between 2000 and 2013, only Boston (BOS), as influenced by the local RASP, fully assessed demand management. We find three barriers to airports evaluating demand management in their EISs: narrow project objectives, uncertainty over the FAA's stand on demand management, and economic development concerns. RASPs can help surmount these barriers because they are not constrained by the EIS's narrow objectives and can comprehensively evaluate demand management alternatives.Takeaway for practice: Demand management in aviation, as in surface transportation, holds potential for cost and other savings. Strengthening the role of regional planners in the airport planning process would lead to greater consideration of demand management and may bring innovative solutions to airport congestion. We recommend: a) the FAA play a more direct role in funding regional aviation planning and creating regional aviation planning coalitions; b) regional planners collaborate early in the airport EIS process; and c) planners encourage the FAA to make demand management a mandatory alternative in an EIS for airport capacity expansion.

Evaluation of an Environmental Impact Statement for the Environmental Impact Assessment Report for Modifications to the Petitcodiac River Causeway

This paper is an evaluation of the environmental impact assessment report for the modifications to the Petitcodiac River Causeway. The environmental impact assessment (EIA) is an internationally utilized tool that is applied to inform decision makers of the environmental effects of industrial, commercial, and municipal undertakings (among other human activities); beyond this, EIAs provide a knowledge base for similar undertakings in the future. Using scholarly literature on the topic and regulatory framework references, this paper examines the expectation, reality, and divergence of three key themes in the given report with the aim of gauging its performance as an example of a modern EIA. Based on the report’s commitment to monitoring and follow-up, cumulative effects assessment, and social impact assessment, the Environmental Impact Assessment Report for Modifications to the Petitcodiac River Causeway performs very strongly in light of academic criticisms of typical Canadian EIA practices.

Tribe at a Crossroads: The Navajo Nation Purchases a Coal Mine

Tribe at a Crossroads: The Navajo Nation Purchases a Coal Mine

National legislative and regulatory activities

Algeria Nuclear security Armenia Nuclear safety and radiological protection Brazil Canada Nuclear security Liability and compensation France Radioactive waste management International co-operation Germany Radioactive waste management Greece Management of spent fuel and radioactive waste Ireland Transport of radioactive material Luxembourg Nuclear safety and radiological protection Poland Nuclear safety and radiological protection Radioactive waste management General legislation Portugal General legislation Slovak Republic General legislation Slovenia Nuclear safety and radiological protection Ukraine International co-operation United States Issuance of Proposed Waste Confidence Rule and Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement for public comment Issuance of Final Rule Updating Part 51 and Final License Renewal Generic Environmental Impact Statement Update Inflation adjustment to the Price-Anderson Act Financial Protection Regulations Uruguay Nuclear safety and radiological protection

GENII-LIN project: A multipurpose health physics code to estimate radiation dose and risk from environment contamination

GENII-LIN1 is an open source radiation protection environmental code with capabilities for calculating radiation dose and risk to individuals or populations from radionuclides released to the environment and from pre-existing environmental contamination. The code can be used for purposes such as siting facilities, environmental impact statements, and safety analysis reports. The code can handle exposure pathways that include: external exposure from finite or infinite atmospheric plumes; inhalation; external exposure from contaminated soil, sediments, and water; external exposure from special geometries; and internal exposures from consumption of terrestrial foods, aquatic foods, drinking water, animal products, and inadvertent intake of soil. The flexible modular structure and the strictly object oriented software design simplify code improvement and patching: other modules can be added and the present ones updated, with minimal effort.

Environmental Reviews and Case Studies: Reasonably Foreseeable Futures: Climate Change Adaptation and the National Environmental Policy Act

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) clearly has a role to play in how projects with a federal nexus prepare for climate change. To help agencies improve their consideration of climate change, the Council on Environmental Quality in February 2010 released the NEPA draft guidance, which addresses both emissions and the effects of climate change on agency actions and the affected environment. We analyzed every available final environmental impact statement (154 total) released in July 2011–April 2012, and found that very few incorporated the climate adaptation elements of the 2010 draft guidance. Even the environmental impact statements with the most attention to climate change adaptation considered the effect of climate change with respect to only a limited number of the elements of the affected environment, failed to fully compare the various alternatives, or used short,qualitative statements rather than full analysis based on the best available science. We explore the possible reasons for this and present recommendations for overcoming these obstacles.Environmental Practice 16: 52–76 (2014)

Regulating Mass Surveillance as Privacy Pollution: Learning from Environmental Impact Statements

US law has remarkably little to say about mass surveillance in public, a failure which has allowed the surveillance to grow at an alarming rate -- a rate that is only set to increase. This article proposes 'Privacy Impact Notices' (PINS) -- modeled on Environmental Impact Statements -- as an initial solution to this problem.Data collection in public (and in the home via public spaces) resembles an externality imposed on the person whose privacy is reduced involuntarily; it can also be seen as a market failure caused by an information asymmetry. Current doctrinal legal tools available to respond to the deployment of mass surveillance technologies are limited and inadequate. The article proposes that -- as a first step towards figuring out how to understand, value, and ultimately regulate this mass-privacy-destroying behavior -- we should borrow from the environmental movement and require anyone planning a large-scale public data collection program to file a Privacy Impact Notice (PIN). The PIN proposal is contrasted to the existing much more limited federal privacy analysis requirement, known as Privacy Impact Assessments. The bulk of the article then explains how PINs would work and defends the idea against three predictable critiques (the claim that there is a First Amendment right to data collection, the claim that EISs are a poor policy tool not worthy of emulation, and the claim that notice-based regimes are in general worthless). It argues that PINs have applications to surveillance and data-collection in online public spaces such as Facebook, Twitter, and other virtual spaces. It also considers what the PINs proposal would have to offer towards addressing the now-notorious problem of the NSA’s drift-net surveillance of telephone conversations, emails, and web-based communications. Modeling mass surveillance disclosure regulations on an updated form of environmental impact statement will help protect everyone’s privacy: Mandating disclosure and impact analysis by those proposing to watch us in and through public spaces will enable an informed conversation about privacy in public. Additionally, the need to build consideration of the consequences of surveillance into project planning, as well as the danger of bad publicity arising from excessive surveillance proposals, will act as a counterweight to the adoption of mass data collection projects, just as it did in the environmental context. In the long run, well-crafted disclosure and analysis rules could pave the way for more systematic protection for privacy -- as it did in the environmental context. Effective US regulation of mass surveillance will require that we know a great deal about who and what is being recorded and about the costs and benefits of personal information acquisition and uses. At present we know relatively little about how to measure these; a privacy equivalent of environmental impact statements will not only provide case studies, but occasions to grow expertise.

Acting with No Regret: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective of <em>Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Defense Council</em>

I. INTRODUCTION II. BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF MARSH A. Duty to Prepare an EIS: A Requirement B. Duty to Prepare a Supplemental EIS: The Marsh Legacy C. A Closer at Marsh: A Dam and Two Documents III. APPLICATION OF MARSH IN THE U.S. COURTS OF APPEALS--WHAT KINDS OF NEW INFORMATION DO COURTS FIND (AND NOT FIND) SIGNIFICANT? A. Hold the Phone! Supplementation (or at least more review) is Required B. Nothing to Supplement Here 1. Information Previously Considered 2. Speculative Environmental Impacts 3. Information does not Undermine Assumptions in EIS 4. Common Sense 5. Impacts will Ultimately be Studied Elsewhere 6. Summary IV. THE MARSH TWO-STEP? A. The Basis for the Two-Step Review in Marsh B. Whether the Two-Step Marsh Test Undermines NEPA's Rule of Reason C. Application of the Hard Look Principle Going Forward D. Steps to Minimize Legal Risk 1. Marsh: the Paradigmatic Hard Look 2. Hughes River Watershed--an Incomplete Review 3. The Importance of Public Involvement 4. Pragmatic Approaches to New Information 5. Choreographing the Marsh Two-Step (and One-Step) V. CONCLUSION NEPA ensures that the agency will not act on incomplete information, only to regret its decision after it is too late to correct. *** I. INTRODUCTION We live in a world of information overload. Smartphones, Facebook, Twitter, and email alert us to breaking news instantaneously. Almost before we process new information, another sensational story takes center stage: the latest political scandal, mass shooting, plane crash, superstorm, kidnapping, or act of war or terror. How do we react to this ever-evolving information? Some people cancel travel plans, remove children from public school, or buy security systems or weapons. others move on with their day and barely bat an eye as they process all of this new and seemingly information. For federal agencies preparing environmental impact statements (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the answer appears clear. Twenty-five years ago in Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Defense Council, (1) the Supreme Court held that an agency must supplement its EIS before taking federal action if it discovers new and information. (2) But what is significant? One might assume that it would be shocking events, like terrorism, nuclear accidents, and environmental disasters. However, as discussed below, courts rarely consider this type of information significant. Instead, it is the agency's response to new information that frequently proves decisive. Given the prevalence and importance of this issue, Marsh has often been cited over the past twenty-five years. (3) As major federal actions regularly take years to complete--occasionally years more than anticipated--agencies routinely confront the question of whether the analysis in an aged EIS is still legally sufficient, or whether the issuing agency must update or supplement it with new information. (4) Unfortunately, a review of scholarly articles and case law reveals that this question has not been treated with the care it deserves. Few academic articles seriously discuss the problem of supplementation. (5) Worse, most reviewing courts routinely provide a cursory recitation of Marsh boilerplate and then leap to a conclusion of whether an agency acted correctly. (6) In honor of Marshs twenty-fifth anniversary, this article takes a fresh look at this Supreme Court decision and the Federal courts' subsequent reactions to it. First, we examine what actually constitutes new and information under Marsh. While courts do not crisply define significant, (7) a review of the courts' approaches to the problem may help determine what information is actually significant in practice. Second, we examine what procedural steps an agency must take to determine whether new information actually meets the significant standard. …

Health Impact Assessment, Physical Activity and Federal Lands Trail Policy.

The objectives of this paper are to describe the application of Health Impact Assessment (HIA) to inform trail decisions affecting a rural, under-resourced community and propose the routine integration of HIAs to enhance NEPA environmental assessments and environmental impact statements for trail decisions on federal lands. Screening, scoping, assessment, recommendations, reporting, monitoring and evaluation are being used to examine the health impact of trail location and design. HIA recommendations are being integrated into the public lands National Environmental Protection Act process for planning access to a new segment of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. Potential users from a nearby rural New Mexico community and a region of almost one million may benefit from this HIA-informed planning. HIA can be integrated into the policy and decision-making process for trails on public lands.

Evaluation of risk assessment procedures for buildings adjacent to tunnelling works

Risk assessment procedures for underground projects form a key component of pre-construction efforts since resulting ground movements may cause damage to adjacent structures. Particularly for urban tunnelling works, surface settlements may impinge on a vast number of structures and can result in significant lawsuits unless the appropriate building protection measures are implemented. Although the understanding of tunnelling induced building damage has advanced greatly in recent decades, damage and litigation persist. Hence, this paper reconsiders the pre-construction risk assessment procedures undertaken during the generation of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by formally including considerations relating to a building’s historical significance, present usage, and current physical condition. In doing so, a holistic approach to risk assessment is proposed, allowing for project resources to be targeted towards buildings that are most at risk. This is demonstrated through a Class A prediction for a section of an upcoming underground railway system in which 14% of the selected study area of 220 buildings are identified to be at risk. Results are compared to those produced by the official EIS where building vulnerabilities are considered in isolation from the damage prediction assessment and just 5% of buildings are considered to be at risk. The proposed methodology offers a standardised procedure for incorporating both cultural and physical aspects of each building, thereby providing a more systematic, comprehensive procedure for pre-construction risk assessment than previously available.

Industrial Scars – An Artful Environmental Impact Statement

Industrial Scars – An Artful Environmental Impact Statement