Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
NYS Department of Transportation analysis to assess effects on
energy consumption
Federal Clean Air Act standards
Administrative rulings for state or federally designated parks,
recreational areas, heritage areas, and natural landmarks
The above is a partial list. It illustrates, of course, the bureaucratic
complexity of EIS. Despite the good intentions of the laws, the legal wel-
ter poses a potential problem for environmental policy. Whereas laws may
require painstaking examination of some problems, say lightly polluted rain
and snow running off from new pavements into the harbor, the same laws
may not be specific or detailed on the effects of, say, disruption of heavily
polluting toxic sediments buried under the river silt. So the force of the
rules may cause disproportionate attention to some environmental effects
as compared to others.
The EIS process has also expanded to include more than strictly
“environmental” issues, in the usual sense of the word. The EIS must now
consider the effects of the bridge on nearby urban land use (will it disrupt
a residential area? divert traffic from a commercial street?), architectural
landmarks, “neighborhood and community cohesion,” social groups such
as minority and low-income populations and the disabled, school districts,
places of worship, regional and local economies, and business districts.
It is straightforward enough to identify landmark buildings on registers
of historic places. But effects on “neighborhood and community” are notori-
ously difficult to judge and are subject to multiple viewpoints about what
study method is appropriate and what impact is worthy of concern. Studies
of effects on “regional and local economies” can range from the simplistic
to the extremely complicated, with results varying with data sources used
and the theories of the economists hired.
To be sure, these expansions of EIS law have admirable intentions.
They mean to ensure that infrastructure projects take into account com-
munity concerns that are not strictly environmental, say by leading planners
to make that bridge piers are so arranged as to preserve boat access ramps
that bring tourists into town. The expanded rules may also be meant to
counterweigh environmental benefit against economic hardship.
Certainly, bridges have economic and social as well as environmental
effects. However, a trained social scientist may well doubt that any document
prepared at reasonable cost, in acceptable time, can provide an adequate
answer to social and economic questions. The study may well provide results
inferior to in-context local decisions based on local judgment by elected
officials and local participants about what is best for a community. Nor is it
clear that an EIS is the right place for data informing local debates about the
