HYDRO26266 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

6-21-7999 7:D7PM FROI•~GIHON a550GIaTES 303 a36 93~ p.s , G)HON EFFERT ~~~ A crs ,tr l.au Mr. Chuck Williams Page 4 June 21, 1999 and alternatives. Even mote damaging is the fact that the BLM continued to withhold the Contrnercial Mine Plan during the public comment period on the DEIS, making it impossible for members of the public [o know on what they were commenting. The BLM has since released copies of the Commercial Mine Plan to the public, brit only after being pressured to do so, and after the public comment period on the DEIS closed. The BLM set an abnormally brief comment period (60 days) and resisted all requests to extend or reopen it so members of the public could comment on rite illegally withheld mint plan. These failures subvert the purposes of NEPA and undermine the DEIS, resulting in a deficient process and DEIS. EPA simply catrnot rely on the DEIS for its own compliance with NEPA in order to issue the UIC area permit. C. The DEIS Lacks Vital Information About $aseline Water Ouaiity. An important part of any EIS is the analysis of the affected environment. This analysis is required by the CEQ regulations and describes the "baseline" environment before the proposed action starts, setting the stage for the analysis of environmental impacts. That analysis simply cannot be performed adequately without knowing what is the baseline. See 40 C.F.R § 1502.15 ("The [EIS] shall succinctly describe the environment of the area(s) to be affected or created by the alternatives under consideration. 'The descriptions shall be no longer than is necessary to understand the effects o(the alternatives."). Without an adequate understanding of rite current state of the environment in the project area, it is impossible for EPA to assess the errvironnterttal impacts of r}te proposed project. However, this is exactly what the BLM attempted to do. The BLM did not require American Soda to collect baseline data, allowing it instead to use minimal surface water data that were ac hand and minimal ground water data from just t}rree test wells and from a large database of U.S. Geological Service ("U.S.G.S.") data for the Piceance Creek Basin. See DEIS at 3•IS. The result is chat baseline is poorly and inadequately defined, by the BLM's own admission See DEIS at 4.17 (indicating that "[a]dditional monitoring is necessary ... [t]o determine the baseline conditions for the aquifers"). BLM and EPA are obligated to "insure the professional integrity, including scientific integrity, of the discussions and analyses in environmental impact statements." 40 C,F.R § 1502.24. We believe that neither BLM nor EPA made any efforts ro verify independently the baseline analyses presented by American Soda and incorporated by the BLM into the DEIS. 4