Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
analysis to decision makers and also allows stakeholders to be actively and
cooperatively involved with aspects within their area of concern and knowl-
edge without being overwhelmed with issues and information beyond their
interest or experience. The importance of taking this approach of segmenting
complex and critical environmental problems into manageable, bite-sized
pieces is illustrated by the Boston Harbor Cleanup EIS case study, where
alternatives were developed separately for the semi-independent compo-
nents of wastewater treatment location, wastewater treatment processes,
wastewater residuals (i.e., sludge) processing, residuals disposal, and waste-
water effluent discharge (see Section 6.3.1).
Another example of segmenting the action for alternative development is
a project in Haiti to upgrade an agricultural irrigation system (USAID, in
progress). This project has three basic components: upgrade the agricultural
road servicing the area, repair and enhance for low maintenance the irriga-
tion canal system, and replace and upgrade the river diversion to the canal.
The river diversion is necessary to get the water into the canal system and
the improved canal is necessary to get the water to the existing and new agri-
cultural lands. The road improvement is necessary to develop and maintain
the diversion and canal, and also to transport agricultural materials to the
area and produce to market. Thus, all of these components are integrated,
and successful implementation of each is essential to the overall purpose
and need to stabilize agricultural land use and expansion of food produc-
tion in the region. However, exactly how and where the road is upgraded
does not affect the diversion or canal. Similarly, the type and method of river
diversion do not affect the location or type of road. Therefore, it was pos-
sible to identify, and ultimately analyze, independent alternatives for each
component.
There are potential pitfalls associated with segmenting a project for alter-
native identification, and steps must be taken at various stages to avoid
compromising the environmental analysis. The first step is to call on the
expertise, particularly technical expertise, of the environmental analy-
sis team and appropriate stakeholders to determine the interrelatedness
of the components. This is particularly important in alternative screening
(see Section 4.5.3) to ensure screening out an alternative for one component
does not unintentionally eliminate or handicap an alternative for another
component of the project. Another potential concern, relevant to impact pre-
diction is that the combining of selected alternatives for all components cre-
ates additional impacts not inherent in any individual component. This is
not a fatal flaw, but must be addressed by impact prediction of comprehen-
sive alternatives, usually conducted as a final stage of impact prediction in
the environmental analysis.
Once the alternatives have been identified, they must be described and
the description of alternatives in an environmental impact analysis is a bal-
ancing act. The description must ensure there is enough detail provided to
predict impact but not so much as to indicate the project, plan, or policy
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