Hello!
I wanted to let you know about an important update to the environmental
process for the Kodiak Airport Runway Safety Area improvements. Late
last week, the FAA Alaskan Regional Administrator signed the Record of
Decision (ROD) on the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the
Runway Safety Area Project. The ROD represents the formal approval
required to proceed with the project. Funds are currently being programmed
for design and construction. Notices that let the public know the
ROD is available will be published in the Kodiak and Anchorage papers as
well the Federal Register. Copies of the ROD will be available within
the next week at:
- The project website: www.KodiakAirportEIS.com
- A. Holmes Memorial Library, 319 Lower
Mill Bay Road, Kodiak, AK 99615
- FAA Airports Division office in downtown
Anchorage at 222 W. 7th Avenue. Please call or email me
before you visit, so I can coordinate
The ROD explains why the project was
approved and includes a description of the final mitigation package, which
has been expanded since the release of the FEIS. After a request from the
Sun’aq Tribe, the FAA worked with the Tribe to further address possible
impacts from the proposed project on the Buskin River fishery. Through
the resulting government-to-government coordination meetings, the FAA came
up with a solution to address effects on the traditional subsistence practices
of tribal members and other individuals using the fishery for harvest.
The FAA decided that a five-year post-construction monitoring effort should
be conducted to document the change in habitat and species usage around
the mouth of the Buskin River. This monitoring will be in addition
to the mitigation described previously, including:
- Paying a $2 million in-lieu fee payment
to purchase high-value intertidal, estuarine and/or coastal habitat in
the Kodiak Archipelago Islands area for preservation.
- Providing the Alaska Department of Fish
& Game with $200,000 to fund additional subsistence management programs
on the Buskin River for four years.
With
the finalized mitigation plan and a signed ROD in place, the proposed project
can proceed with design and go to construction (expected to begin next
year). This is the milestone we have been working toward and I can’t
thank you enough for your participation and help in this process.
As always, if you have any questions,
please feel free to contact me by phone at 907-271-5453, email at Leslie.Grey@faa.gov.
Kind regards, Leslie
Leslie A. Grey
Environmental Protection Specialist
FAA - Alaskan Region, Airports Division
907-271-5453
Mitigation Draft Stakeholder Message
No. 1 of 2
Good Afternoon!
Where oh where is summer? I sure hope
it arrives soon, I'm certainly ready for it! In the meantime, a lot
has happened with the Kodiak Airport Runway Safety Area (RSA) projects
since my last e-mail, and I want to update you on a few items.
As I wrote about in a previous e-mail, we
have been developing a mitigation plan for the unavoidable adverse impacts
that could result from the project. The Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) and Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (ADOT&PF)
have been working with agencies, tribes and other interested parties on
how to best mitigate these impacts from the proposed projects.
Mitigation is a fairly complex and lengthy
topic. Instead of trying to cover all of the details in a single message,
I think breaking the topic up into two parts works best. This letter
will focus on providing background on mitigation and how it applies to
this project. In my next letter, I will continue with specific information
on how we developed the specific mitigation plan for this project.
What is mitigation?
One of the definitions I believe best describes
the full range of options for mitigation is from the Council on Environmental
Quality. Generally, “mitigation” can be provided in many forms,
including:
1. Avoiding
the impact altogether by not taking a certain action or parts of an
action.
2. Minimizing
impacts by limiting the degree or magnitude of the action and its implementation.
3. Rectifying
the impact by repairing, rehabilitating or restoring the affected environment.
4. Reducing
or eliminating the impact over time by preservation and maintenance
operations during the life of the action.
5. Compensating
for the impact by replacing or providing substitute resources or environments.
The descriptions above are “textbook” definitions.
To connect these definitions to this project, here are some examples of
mitigation measures that we have already incorporated into this project:
Avoiding: By selecting Runway 18/36
Alternative 7 as the preferred alternative for the RSA improvement, we
avoided placement of any fill material near the mouth of the Buskin River.
Minimizing: Incorporating engineered
materials arresting system (EMAS) for Runway 07/25 will allow us to reduce
the amount of fill we would place in Womens Bay.
Rectifying the impact: The Environmental
Impact Statement (EIS) identifies several Best Management Practices that
will be used to help restore the affected environment as much as possible.
One example of this is re-vegetating affected areas with native seed
after construction is completed.
Compensating: This type of mitigation
is usually reserved for unavoidable environmental impacts that cannot be
avoided or lessened through other means.
What unavoidable impacts need to be
mitigated?
Even with the measures included to avoid,
minimize, and repair the environmental impacts, there are still impacts
that would be unavoidable. The EIS identifies some unavoidable environmental
impacts, including:
1. Fill
into marine waters resulting in a loss of “waters of the U.S.” (i.e.
waters under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers)
2. Impacts
to the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge
3. Impacts
to Essential Fish Habitat, including salmonids, which are covered under
the Magnusson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation Act
4. Negative
effects on subsistence users, including minority and low-income populations
as well as Alaska Native traditional and customary subsistence practices.
How can these unavoidable impacts be
mitigated?
A “compensatory mitigation plan” describes
the measures that will be taken to counteract impacts. The RSA Projects’
compensatory mitigation plan is currently under development.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) and
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have jointly issued the
Compensatory Mitigation Rule. This Rule provides guidance on developing
mitigation for projects, like this one, that require placement of fill
into Waters of the U.S. The RSA Projects’ compensatory mitigation plan
must comply with these rules for the ACOE to issue a permit that would
allow fill to be placed into Womens Bay.
What are the objectives of the compensatory
mitigation plan?
Simply stated, the objectives of the mitigation
plan are to reduce the total severity of the projects’ adverse impacts.
To achieve those objectives, the mitigation plan’s goals include:
· Improving
or replacing habitat functions and values related to anadromous fisheries,
migratory birds, and marine resources and habitats.
· Replacing
lost or affected subsistence opportunities and resources by providing access
to or preservation of areas with subsistence resource values that have
reasonable access from the Kodiak area (The Kodiak area is defined as Kodiak
Island and Afognak Island).
· Complying
with the Compensatory Mitigation Rule
What mitigation types are examined
under the Compensatory Mitigation Rule?
The Compensatory Mitigation Rule organizes
several types of preferred mitigation options into a hierarchy: To follow
the Rule, a permittee (in this case ADOT&PF) must attempt to mitigate
its project in the following order:
This first preference requires the use of
mitigation banks. A mitigation bank is a wetland, stream,
or other aquatic resource area that has been restored, established, enhanced,
or preserved for the purpose of providing compensation for unavoidable
environmental impacts.
This type of mitigation is a type of “third-party”
mitigation, where the permittee (ADOT&PF) pays a third-party by buying
“credits” which are calculated based on the amount and type of resources
affected. The third-party uses the funds from these credits (combined
with credits from other compensatory mitigation) to enhance, restore, or
preserve the same types of resources that were affected through the existing
mitigation bank. A mitigation bank needs to be federally approved,
and there are no federally approved mitigation banks in the Kodiak area
(Kodiak Island or Afognak Island).
Since mitigation banks cannot be used, the
second preference is in-lieu fee programs. In-lieu fee programs
occur when a permittee (ADOT&PF) provides funds to a third-party sponsor
(generally a public agency or a non-profit). The third-party sponsor
then uses these funds to purchase lands that help enhance, restore or preserve
the types of resources affected by the project within a local area (in
this case Kodiak Island or Afognak Island).
If approved mitigation banks or in-lieu fee
programs are not available, the rule allows permittee-responsible mitigation,
which in this case would mean ADOT&PF would complete a project restoration,
establishment, enhancement, or preservation project of an area, instead
of providing funds to a third-party. For permittee-responsible projects,
the Rule prefers the mitigation project to be “on-site” and “in-kind,”
meaning the project would need to be near the RSA projects and mitigate
for the same impacts described in the EIS. In this case, ADOT&PF
would also need to maintain the site permanently.
What‘s next?
We’re continuing to work on the compensatory
mitigation plan, which I will update you on in my next letter, likely at
the end of June or early July. As always, if you have any questions
or comments on the mitigation process or the Final EIS, please don’t hesitate
to contact me at Leslie.Grey@faa.gov
or by phone at (907)271-2851.
Sincerely, Leslie
Leslie A. Grey
Environmental Protection Specialist
FAA - Alaskan Region, Airports Division
907-271-5453
Good Morning!
Wow, it is already the end of February,
where does the time go? It's time for an update on what we have been
working on over the past month. There’s a lot going on concurrently
right now, so I’ll break up my update by subject to more easily highlight
what’s happening.
Mitigation
While the Kodiak Airport EIS includes several
measures to avoid and minimize impacts, we are continuing our work on developing
and refining a mitigation plan to mitigate those significant environmental
impacts that are unavoidable. As a quick recap of impacts detailed
in the EIS, the preferred RSA alternatives would not completely avoid long-term
environmental adverse impacts to wetlands (0.1 acres), waters of the US
(17.8 acres), the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (17.8 acres),
and subsistence.
As part of developing the appropriate mitigation,
we have upcoming agency and tribal coordination meetings in Kodiak and
Anchorage the week of March 4th. We will be discussing potential
mitigation measures to develop a reasonable compensatory mitigation package
for identified significant impacts. We are still developing the details
of the plan, but I will send everyone an update as the mitigation measures
continue to get flushed out.
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation
Act (ANILCA)
In my last message, I mentioned that we
would be scheduling ANILCA Title XI hearings to receive comments on the
potential impacts on those lands protected by ANILCA, such as the Alaska
Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. ANILCA requires that we will hold
a hearing in both Kodiak and Washington D.C. Based on our current
schedule, the hearings should be held around mid-March. I’ll send
a message out once we officially have those hearings on the calendar.
Since our last update, the FAA has determined
that an ANILCA Section 810 Subsistence evaluation will be prepared for
the project. Section 810 applies to projects that could affect subsistence
resources on federal lands and because the proposed projects affect subsistence
resources, FAA is preparing an 810 Evaluation for the preferred alternatives.
This evaluation will be released publically for review and comment.
As with Title XI, Section 810 also requires public hearings and we
plan to hold the hearings for the 810 Evaluation at the same time as the
Title XI ANILCA hearings.
We will also provide a comment period for
both Title XI and the Section 810 Evaluation, likely during the month of
March. The comment period will last approximately one month. Again,
once we have these dates cemented, we’ll get the word out. The team
will also place advertisements in local news sources for the hearing times,
locations, and comment periods.
Final EIS Release
The team is busily developing responses
to all comments received on the Draft EIS. As mentioned in my last
update, responses to all comments will be included in the Final EIS, along
with any necessary changes to the document itself based on the comments.
As a reminder, we uploaded all the comments received on the Draft
EIS onto the website, so if you have not already gotten a chance to open
them up and are interested in what was submitted, take a look. The
link is provided below.
http://www.kodiakairporteis.com/documents/documents.htm
The Final EIS is scheduled to be released
later this summer. As usual, I’ll provide updates as we go.
As always, thank you for your interest
in this project. As we move forward on this project, I will continue
to keep you updated with our progress. But in the meantime, please
let me know if you have any questions. You can always reach me at
907-271-5453 or via email at Leslie.Grey@faa.gov.
Best Regards, Leslie
Leslie A. Grey
Environmental Protection Specialist
FAA - Alaskan Region, Airports Division
907-271-5453
Hello and Happy New Year! I
hope all of you are off to a great start in 2013. First and foremost, I
want you to know how much I appreciate your participation in the whole
EIS process,
and most recently for the review and comment and public hearing of the
Draft EIS.
We received all comments by the due
date on December 18 and are starting the process of responding them.
All comments received will get a response and will be available in the
Final EIS. We will be working on this for the
next few months.
For anyone interested in seeing all the
comments received, as well as the testimony from the public hearing, we
have uploaded them to the project website.
http://kodiakairporteis.com/documents/documents.htm
In addition to working on the response
to comments, the team is working on the compensatory mitigation plan.
The Kodiak Airport DEIS includes several measures to avoid and minimize
impacts, but the preferred RSA alternatives
would not completely avoid long-term environmental adverse impacts. As a
result, we are coordinating with others to determine the appropriate
compensatory mitigation for these impacts. We will continue to provide
updates on both the status of the comment
resolutions and the compensatory mitigation process as we move forward.
Finally, because the EIS alternatives
involve fill into the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge an Alaska
National Interests Land Conservation Act (ANILCA) Title XI application
is required including public hearings in Kodiak
and Washington D.C. We are planning to have the hearings in late
February/early March. As we solidify these hearing details, I will most
certainly get the information out to everyone.
That’s all for now, as always, please don’t hesitate to contact me by phone (907) 271-5453 or email: Leslie.grey@faa.gov.
Best regards, Leslie
Leslie A. Grey
Environmental Protection Specialist
FAA - Alaskan Region, Airports Division
907-271-5453
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