This was emailed to me this morning by someone who read about the District’s attempt to evade environmental laws.
This is an overview from Wikipedia:
An environmental impact statement (EIS) under United States environmental law, is a document required by the National Environmental Policy Act for federal government agency actions “significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.”[1] A tool for decision making, an EIS describes the positive and negative environmental effects of proposed agency action – and cites alternative actions.
Not all federal actions require a full EIS. If the action may or may not cause a significant impact the agency can prepare a smaller, shorter document called an Environmental Assessment (EA) first. The finding of the EA determines whether an EIS is required. If the EA indicates that no significant impact is likely, then the agency can release a finding of no significant impact (FONSI) and carry on with the proposed action. Otherwise, the agency must then conduct a full-scale EIS. Most EAs result in a FONSI.
This is one of many interesting statements from an article regarding the social impact of projects(http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/social_impact_guide.htm)
It is important to consider the social equity or distribution of impacts across different populations. Just as the biological sections of EIS’s devote particular attention to threatened or endangered plant and wildlife species, the socioeconomic sections of EIS’s must devote particular attention to the impacts on vulnerable segments of the human population. Examples include the poor, the elderly, adolescents, the unemployed, and women; members of the minority and/or other groups that are racially, ethnically, or culturally distinctive; or occupational, cultural, political, or value-based groups for whom a given community, region, or use of the biophysical environment is particularly important.
In addition to the types of disturbances that can affect other species, humans are affected by changes in the distinctly human environment, including those associated with the phenomenon known as the social construction of reality. Persons not familiar with the social sciences are often tempted to treat social constructions as mere perceptions or emotions, to be distinguished from reality. Such a separation is not so easy to accomplish. We are careful to point out that the social construction of reality is characteristic of all social groups, including the agencies that are attempting to implement changes as well as the communities that are affected.
