Conducting the Environmental Impact Analysis and Assessment - Environmental Impact Analysis: Process and Methods - page 168

r Ongoing regional monitoring required by the Clean Water Act and
Clean Air Act at established long-term sampling sites.
r Hazardous waste cleanup efforts. As part of remedial site investiga-
tions, the conditions of critical environmental resources associated
with the site, and sometimes the adjacent areas, are described in detail
(e.g., biological conditions as part of the ecological risk assessment
required for most site cleanups, Section 7.2).
r Academic research. Investigations done for some graduate theses fre-
quently include description of existing conditions as part of testing a
hypothesis.
r Government-sponsored environmental monitoring programs. For
example, the U.S. EPA sponsored the Environmental Monitoring
and Assessment Program (EMAP) that focused on aquatic environ-
mental resources. The goal of EMAP was assessment of current eco-
logical condition and forecasts of future risks to natural resources.
EMAP collected field data from 1990 to 2006. Currently, the National
Aquatic Resource Survey, conducted by EPA, has incorporated much
of the former EMAP's monitoring efforts of the nation's aquatic
resources. There are similar programs in place by other resource and
regulatory agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.
r Master plans developed by regional planning agencies, states, and
local municipalities.
There is another source of available information that should be incor-
porated into the affected environment description. This information
comes from stakeholders and can be valuable, worthless, or anything
in between, but no matter its value, stakeholder input must be consid-
ered. As discussed in Section 4.3, scoping input by stakeholders can be an
important source of information useful in describing the affected environ-
ment. Non-environmental professionals can have valuable information
regarding the local area and conditions that can be helpful and not read-
ily available from other sources. This can include personal observations,
anecdotal reports, gray literature (e.g., high school or nonprofit monitoring
data), news reports, etc. Caution must be exercised in incorporating such
information because frequently the information reflects bias, posturing, or
misinterpretation.
Interviews with local fishers are an example of stakeholder input to the
description of the affected environment. People often spend decades fishing
and just observing natural environmental conditions in local aquatic sys-
tems and can provide a wealth of knowledge such as:
r Habitat conditions
r Observable water quality conditions (e.g., turbidity, aquatic plant
growth, odors)