Record Details
page 9
Digital Collections at BYU
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | page 9 Diamond Fork System Final Supplement to the Final Environmental Impact Statement, page 9 |
| Coverage | Electronic reproduction; |
| Format | 9 text/PDF |
| Rights | Brigham Young University; http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/generic.php Public Domain Public |
| Language | English; eng; en |
| Relation | Central Utah Project; Western Waters Digital Library; comment letter no 10 page 9 of 12 the methodology used in diamond fork should be explained and the rationale for two different assessment methods both of which apparently use the same basic assumptions justified the paired transects analysis in the tae technical report is also confusing appears to conduct an invalid statistical analysis and contradicts other data repeat surveys of established transects in and around the large colony 26 on diamond fork have shown that the channel bed changes in elevation by up to 2 feet during a single irrigation season gecy and gecy 1998 with this degree of annual channel change it is inconceivable that unsurveyed transects developed from 15 year old topographic maps could reasonably resemble the actual floodplain flood plain and channel morphology and predict water level changes of 0 0.1 01 01 oi 1 foot or less additionally water surface analysis along surveyed transects through colony 26 show that the water surface would drop below the species tolerance level which contrasts with the unsurveyed analysis which shows a water level drop of only a few inches the difference between these two analyses alone shows a discrepancy of impact analysis of 15 in total population numbers just by considering one comparison the accuracy of the non surveyed transect predictions could be better evaluated by 1 comparing results from actual surveyed cross sections through occupied colonies vs unsurveyed cross sections in the same location and 2 field verification of model prediction results at different flows in in the field the latter method was used on spanish fork to improve the model accuracy otherwise a description of how the rigorous assumptions required for a paired mest t test or other paired analyses including normality have been met and identification of the standard deviation is necessary 5 no results are provided for the ute ladies tresses analysis for diamond fork but are for spanish fork impacts are described as potentially significant in the EIS but as not significant in the tae technical report this is confusing are there impacts or not if there are no impacts then conservation measures are not necessary if there are impacts they should be disclosed I 1 agree that the results of the water table analysis can not accurately predict the exact nature of the impacts but a general impact based on the methods provided in the technical report can be provided if there is discomfort in identifying an actual impact I 1 would suggest that instead of static point in time water table modeling that impacts to the ute ladies tresses along both diamond fork and spanish fork can be better identified by looking at the processes that maintain habitat in the streams the data collected for diamond fork identifies that the processes maintaining the existing habitat ie the lateral instability would be maintained under the proposed action as the duration of flows above the effective discharge would continue and therefore there would be no change in the processes maintaining the ute ladies tresses habitat along diamond fork while the EIS states that there are no accepted methods for identifying ute ladies tresses impacts there are accepted methods for evaluating changes in floodplain flood plain morphology that are being used by geomorphologists along alone aiono the green river and elsewhere to evaluate how changes in flows affect floodplain flood plain building Z 1 and erosion erosion rates and processes 6 the purposes of the conservation measures are unclear basically the conservation measures propose monitoring instead of completing an impact analysis in the EIS if the conservation measures really are a monitoring mom i toring program then this needs to be clearly stated the monitoring program also needs to have clearly defined objectives identification of the questions to be answered and identification of the point at which the monitoring indicates a necessary change in the flow 9 |
| Identifier | http://cdm15999.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/WesternWatersProject/id/8971 |
