Conducting the Environmental Impact Analysis and Assessment - Environmental Impact Analysis: Process and Methods - page 182

two groups, and the location of the cultural sites was the critical input to the
description of the affected environment, prediction of impacts, and mitigation.
The cultural resources/wildlife-affected environment investigations made
for a busy summer with biologists bumping into anthropologists, and the soles
of many pairs of boots were ground to dust from walking over many kilometers
of the high-desert lava surface. But the two surveys proved to be confirmatory
because the identified cultural resource sites coincided with the migration paths
identified from the fecal pellet surveys (Figures 5.5 and 5.6). After the informa-
tion was assimilated, this made sense because for centuries the mammals fol-
lowed the exact same migration routes and the Native Americans established
their hunting locations along the routes. This confirmed that the results of the
pellet survey identified present, historic, and persistent migration routes and
added a level of confidence to the findings. The results of the affected environ-
ment investigations allowed a proposed radar configuration that both avoided
impacts to cultural sites and did not interfere with large mammal migration
(Figure 5.7). Using the information from the affected environment investigation
to determine the radar layout made the prediction of impacts very simple: the
critical resources were avoided and the impact was minimal.
5.2.6 Dry Cargo Discharge to the Great Lakes Affected
Environment Investigation Case Study
The investigation of the affected environment for the DCR management EIS
(U.S. Coast Guard 2008) accomplished not only a description of existing con-
ditions but also an effective approach, similar to the OTH example, to impact
prediction. As described in the background for the DCR management envi-
ronmental impact analysis (Section 10.2), since the late 19th century the resi-
due spilled from loading and unloading DCR (i.e., primarily iron ore, coal,
and limestone) has been “swept” into the waters of the Great Lakes. Thus the
description of the affected environment reflects the impacts resulting from
decades of discharging DCR. The challenge for the environmental analysis
team was to identify the specific areas within the vast expanses of the Great
Lakes where DCR had been discharged and then describe the conditions of
the critical environmental resources within the discharge areas. This charac-
terization would suffice as description of the affected environment (because
future sweeping would occur in the same locations), and comparison of
these areas to similar portions of the Great Lakes with no DCR discharges
would lend insight into the impacts caused by decades of DCR sweeping.
This comparison could then be used to predict future impacts.
A phased approach similar to the one described for the Scituate wastewater-
affected environment investigation (Section 5.2.4) was followed for the DCR EIS
description of the affected environment. As emphasized throughout this chap-
ter, the first step was to review existing literature, and two types of useful avail-
able information were identified. The first source of information was ecological
monitoring conducted by state and federal agencies in the Great Lakes, which