Environmental Engineering FOURTH EDITION

16 ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

For example, in 1980 the U.S. Department of Energy issued a GEIS on the impact
of disposition of commercially generated nuclear fuel. In 1984, the Bonneville Power
Administration issued a PEIS on its proposed energy conservation program.

Environmental Inventories

The first step in evaluating the environmental impact of a project’s alternatives is to

inventory factors that may be affected by the proposed action. Existing conditions are

measured and described, but no effort is made to assess the importance of a variable.

Any number and many kinds of variables may be included, such as:

1. the “ologies”: hydrology, geology, climatology, anthropology, and archaeology;


2. environmental quality: land, surface and subsurface water, air, noise, and trans-
   portation impacts;


3. plant and animal life;


4. economic impact on the surrounding community: number of jobs, average family
   income, etc.;


5. analysis of the risks to both people and the natural environment from accidents
   that may occur during the life of the project; and


6. other relevant socioeconomic parameters, like future land use, expansion or
   diminution of the population of urban areas and exurbs, the impacts of nonresident
   populations, and environmental justice considerations.

Environmental Assessment

The process of calculating projected effects that a proposed action or construction

project will have on environmental quality is called environmental assessment. A

methodical, reproducible, and reasonable method is needed to evaluate both the effect

of the proposed project and the effects of alternatives that may achieve the same ends

but that may have different environmental impacts. A number of semiquantitative

approaches, among them the checklist, the interaction matrix, and the checklist with

weighted rankings, have been used.

Checklists are lists of potential environmental impacts, both primary and sec-

ondary. Primary effects occur as a direct result of the proposed project, such as the

effect of a dam on aquatic life. Secondary effects occur as an indirect result of the

action. For example, an interchange for a highway may not directly affect wildlife, but

indirectly it will draw such establishments as service stations and quick food stores,

thus changing land use patterns.

The checklist for a highway project could be divided into three phases: planning,

construction, and operation. During planning, consideration is given to the environ-

mental effects of the highway route and the acquisition and condemnation of property.

The construction phase checklist will include displacement of people, noise, soil ero-

sion, air and water pollution, and energy use. Finally, the operation phase will list

direct impacts owing to noise, water pollution resulting from runoff, energy use, etc.,