The 9th Circuit Appellate Court reviewed the EIS prepared for the exchange of land in Joshua Tree National Park between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Kaiser Eagle Mountain Inc. and confirmed that the EIS violated NEPA. Specifically, the EIS:
used too narrow purpose objectives that resulted in a flawed alternative analysis, and
didn’t adequate address eutrophication or the introducing of new chemicals or nutrients into an ecosystem.
The court determined that the purpose and need in the EIS was more beneficial to the private Kaiser Company than the general public. As a result, the alternatives that stemmed from the purpose were too narrow as well. Even though 6 alternatives were considered, the alternatives were focused on benefiting Kaiser instead of the general public and were written under the assumption that the land exchange would occur.
The court also decided that eutrophication was not properly addressed in the EIS. Instead of having an eutrophication section of the document, the EIS addressed eutrophication in a piecemeal fashion by referencing impacts in other sections of the document like air quality and disease vector control. This piecemeal approach failed to be a thorough look at how new nutrients would affect the ecosystem.
Scopion in Joshua Tree Park
NEPA Lesson Learned: Eutrophication should be addressed in its own section of the EIS when new pollutants will be introduced into an ecosystem.
Sign up for a Cubit subscription before January 1, and you’ll get unlimited Cubit reports for just $499 per month for all of 2010.
We’ve heard from our users that 1 Cubit report saves 40 hours of work and several thousands of dollars, but what our users really want is to be able to pull as many Cubit reports as they need whenever they want. For example, some users want to pull Cubit reports every time:
They have to update their document with new data in response to comments.
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So what’s the catch? 1 Cubit Report saves 40 hours of work and several thousands of dollars, but you are selling an unlimited subscription for $499. Are you guys really bad at math?
Hmmm…well, we’re a new company, and we’re still trying to figure out what model works best for you and for us. This subscription price is an intro offer. We’re pretty sure that we’ll raise the price of subscriptions in the future.
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Your Socio-Ec Reports now include corresponding shapefiles of intersecting Census geographies. Today, your GIS Guru can drop this shapefile into her mapping system for your project—-producing a custom map in less time.
Want to try shapefiles for free? For November 18, 2009 only, contact Anthony by email or phone at 512-563-8477, and he’ll send you a free shapefile for your project.
Example Shapefile
Anthony
The Socio-Ec Report’s intro price of $199 expires on December 31st. In January, the price will be $249. If you’ve included Socio-Ec Reports as part of your bid for a project at $199 and need an extension of the intro price, Anthony can help you out.
The Highlights Handbook presents background data and studies, explains the different lifestages of children, lists the fundamental principles of exposure assessment and cumulative exposure, and provides references for all these components.
These tools are becoming increasingly handy to planners and evaluators of environmental effects as they are taking on the role of health risk assessors. In the actual CSEFH, there are specific chapters that are most likely pertinent to planners. These would the chapters devoted to non-dietary exposures:
The NASA Twitter Bird. Even NASA uses social media websites.
Ryan Link, a Planner with Michael Baker Jr. Inc’s (Baker) Richmond, Virginia office, got hooked on social media over a year ago when working with the non-profit Athletes for a Cure. He immediately made the connection that sites such as Twitter and Facebook could increase public engagement, involvement and outreach for NEPA and just about any planning project.
Recently, Baker has had the opportunity to use these social media sites for the Loop 1604 EIS in San Antonio, TX. The Alamo Regional Mobility Authority (ARMA) is undergoing a 3 year environmental study for Loop 1604 around San Antonio, Texas. In addition to traditional public involvement and outreach like a “More for 1604” website and public meetings, Baker and the Alamo RMA are using 4 popular social media sites to communicate about the EIS: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Below is a little more information about these sites and how they are being used by Baker and the Alamo RMA to increase engagement during public involvement for the Loop 1604 EIS project.
Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world, boasting 300 million users. Users stay current with friends and colleagues via messages, status updates, blog posts and photo galleries. Facebook provides one of the most efficient and free services to stay current in your social world and in the outside world.
The “More for 1604” page Facebook page invites visitors to “Become a Fan”, and join 257 other fans. The “About Me” section tells me that the purpose of the Facebook page is to enhance communication in the community and to make their EIS process transparent.
Scrolling down the news feed, I can find pictures of the meetings or submit my own photos. Status updates include invites to submit articles, blogs, and editorials about the Loop. There are polls and “Questions of the Week”, one of which was “What are your to 3 reasons for using Loop 1604?” The page also cross-references their Twitter page.
Twitter is another successful free social networking site that provides a mini-blogging service. Users set up profiles, add “followers,” and then send messages to their followers. The 140-character mass messages to followers, called “tweets,” vary in purpose: announcements, questions, answers. Tweets can be passed along (”re-tweets”) and replied to creating distributed conversations.
The More for 1604 Twitter page gives their bio as, “The latest on the Loop 1604 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).” The project has 36 tweeps or Tweeter followers as of today. A recent tweet, from only a few hours ago, gives a link to some materials that will be available at an upcoming meeting:
Flickr is a free picture-sharing website, on which users sign up, upload pictures, and share them in a “photostream”. “Geo-tagged” photos may be displayed on a map. Flickr users have the ability to comment on photos, bookmark them and share with others.
Public Scoping Meeting from More for 1604 Flickr website
The More for 1604 photostream on Flickr displays a large grid with 38 photos of recent public meetings and the project study area. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, this website does not provide links to their website or any other social media site. Poking around, I find that the account has only been set up in August 2009, so time will most likely bring a more developed site.
YouTube is another extremely popular website that enables users to upload and share videos. Again, you can create a profile, upload your videos, and others can save them as favorites, comment on them and share them.
The More for 1604 Videos page encourages community participation. It displays a video screen with a 19-second clip of a recent public scoping meeting with 22 views as of today.
On the right side, there are more videos of the scoping meetings, showing more interactions with the public, as well as videos of the current traffic conditions of Loop 1604. I scroll down, and there is their profile, showing the number of channels and videos watched, as well as subscribers. The most popular video on the site has over 70 views.
So, Is It Working?
Ryan Link
Link is pleased with the follower and fan counts for the different sites. Residents seem to be using social media to stay informed about the project. Link hopes that residents will use social media channels to communicate and engage with the project team more in the future.
Administrative Record
It is interesting to note that none of the comments made using these methods will be included in the administrative record. Recent discussion about this controversial subject on the Re: NEPA website debates whether the the public discourse contained in such media outlets should be considered for the administrative record. The Federal Highway Administraion (FHWA) is still working on an official policy to address the use of social media in the EIS process. Hopefully, FHWA and other government agencies will expand their public involvement guidance to address social media in the near future.
But for now, The More for 1604 website provides a disclaimer on “usage of social media websites and tools”:
“Comments made on these sites (Twitter, Facebook, Socializer, blogs), herein called ‘social media sites’ will be not be included or evaluated as part of the ongoing Environmental Impact Statement decision-making process… These social networking tools are only intended to encourage public dialogue about the project.”
This statement means that these comments will not be recorded or officially included in the administrative record for the EIS. Only the traditional ways like calling their hotline, sending an email, or submitting a comment at a meeting or at their office, will provide official documentation of the public’s thoughts and input.
HELPFUL RESOURCES PROVIDED BY ALAMO RMA
Social Media Training Guides: One for Facebook, one for Twitter, and one for Flickr. Each guide give links to how to get started with these sites, how to set up accounts and how to use them.
Are You In the Loop?: A small tutorial about these social media sites for those unaware of what they are and how they can be useful. Click on “Social Media 101 Classroom: Handouts” and download the .pdf.
Get free poverty data for your projects for the next 2 weeks. Poverty data will be available for no charge until November 25, 2009.
We’ve received a ton of requests for the Socio-Ec Report to include the percent of population with income below the poverty level. So we’ve added data from the 2000 Census SF3 P87 table to the Socio-Ec Report. Data from Census table P87 indicates the individuals with incomes in 1999 below the poverty level. Here’s what the new chart looks like:
Poverty Table added to the Socio-Ec Report
While Census data is 10 years old, it’s the only source for poverty data that goes down to the Census block group level. Typically, NEPA documents like CEs, EAs, and EISs are required to provide poverty data at the smallest available Census geography, which is block groups.
To get this free data for your projects until November 25, 2009, login to your account, or use the free Demo account to draw your project and get cut-and-paste ready data. Let us know what you think.
On October 9, Administrative Law Judge Harvey C. Sweitzer found the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to be in violation of NEPA. The Byner Cattle Corporation was proposing grazing permits in the state of Arizona, and the BLM drew up an environment assessment (EA) that the judge found to be seriously lacking a “reasonably thorough discussion of the significant aspects of the probable environmental consequences.”
In September of 2008, the BLM issued a proposed action that vaguely mentions that it would include the construction of “certain springs”, but fails to even mention their existence in the EA. Obviously, this means an analysis of the potential environmental effects of these new waterways is lacking. The Western Watersheds Project (WWP) appealed to the Department of the Interior because they claimed that these new water facilities could “dewater” the Big Sandy River, and the EA did not analyze these effects.
The proposed action for the grazing permits calls for 5 new wells, 11 new troughs, and 12 miles of pipeline. But the EA did not include the locations for any of these new waterways, or whether they would be connected to the Big Sandy River, which could cause serious environmental degradation.
The judge upheld the claims, saying that these water facilities need to be reported and analyzed also to allow for “informed decision-making” and sufficient public discussion. If this is left out of the EA, reviewers of the document “would not be aware of the springs developments, their environmental effects, or the significance of those effects.”
NEPA Lesson Learned: All potential infrastructure associated with the proposed action alternative should be analyzed in the environmental assessment.
We are going to drop the word “Planning” from our name. It’s too confusing. Cubit doesn’t do planning work; we provide environmental data to planners and engineers. So we’ll go by Cubit from now on. Our website will still be www.cubitplanning.com. Someone else beat us to the punch and claimed cubit.com.
So what is a cubit? A cubit is an ancient unit of measure. It is the length from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger. A cubit is a relative unit of measure, an estimation that differs from person to person. And that’s how I see Cubit’s data reports–they are relative estimations about environmental conditions that differ for each geography.
15 Seconds of Fame for the Cubit
Check out Bill Cosby’s classic Noah routine where God and Noah discuss the cubit. Right!
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