Coordinating and Managing the Environmental Impact Analysis Processes - Environmental Impact Analysis: Process and Methods - page 353

exactly how much they would cost to operate and maintain, the efficiency of
the machines, on-deck storage requirements, safety considerations, etc.
Since each resource is evaluated for each alternative, eliminating a resource
or alternative from consideration has cascading efficiencies. For example, a
detailed environmental impact analysis of six alternatives and eight envi-
ronmental resources of concern could require a total of up to 48 separate
descriptions each of affected environments, impact prediction, and impact
mitigation (for a total of 3*48 or 144 sections in the document). A screening
process that eliminates just two alternatives and a similar number of envi-
ronmental resources of concern will require only half the descriptions and
sections in the analysis document (4*6*3 or 72). This can have a major positive
effect on the budget and time required for the analysis or alternatively allow
more resource availability for focus on the critical issues.
Frequently, during the course of the environmental analysis, the predicted
impact, acceptability, or fatal flaw of an alternative will become apparent
before the analysis is 100% complete, and this information can be used to
truncate the rest of the analysis for the alternative, at least for some areas of
impact. If preliminary impact prediction for one alternative demonstrates
that it is an order of magnitude (i.e., 10 times) above or below all other alter-
natives or significance criteria, it may not be necessary to further refine the
analysis. For example if a rough estimate demonstrates that the a wastewater
treatment alternative will result in copper, cadmium, and lead concentra-
tions between 100 and 500 μg/l in the receiving waters, and the significance
criterion (i.e., water quality standard) for these heavy metals is between 1 and
3 μg/l, there may not be any need to further refine the analysis. It may also be
possible to eliminate the alternative from further consideration on this single
and simple analysis without expending any additional effort. It would defy
common sense to spend dozens of hours to calculate the energy required for
a wastewater treatment process that could not achieve acceptable standards
and thus could never be implemented.

9.3.2 Project Plan and Delegation of Work by Discipline

Another important axiom of project management is that if you don't know
where you are going and if you do not have a plan to get there, meeting your
goal is just a random chance. So a plan for the environmental impact analy-
sis is critical, and the scoping statement (Section 4.3.3) for the analysis is the
first step in developing the plan. The scope identifies all the environmental
analysis tasks and the methods to be employed, and the project plan takes
management of the environmental analysis to the next level. The plan identi-
fies not only what and how but also who and when. The plan lays out all the
tasks, identifies their start and completion dates, assigns a responsible person,
and specifies the level of effort for each task (Figure 9.1 presents a simplified
example).