Improving alternatives for environmental impact assessment

Environmental impact assessment (EIA), in the US, requires an objective and rigorous analysis of alternatives. Yet the choice of alternatives for that analysis can be subjective and arbitrary. Alternatives often reflect narrow project objectives, agency agendas, and predilection toward a proposed action. More environmentally sound alternatives can be overlooked or informally eliminated before the formal analyses in EIA. Public participation often occurs too late in the EIA process to influence significantly the design of alternatives. And the EIA process often occurs too late in agency decision-making to consider a full range of alternatives: Alternatives are foreclosed because the EIA typically starts after an agency has already proposed, and become attached to, a particular project. Plus, earlier strategic decisions that determined the project may not have been subject to EIA. Consequently, inadequate alternatives can undermine the goals of EIA — to encourage more environmentally sound and publicly acceptable actions. This article investigates problems with the development of alternatives, based on a study of EIAs in the US, and proposes ways to improve environmental decision-making.