Photograph of the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery surface water intake site on Icicle Creek

Scoping and the Alternatives Development Process

The alternative development process incorporates a number of guiding principles as provided by relevant laws and regulations that require agencies to explore reasonable alternative that meet the purpose of and need for the proposed action, discuss alternative that were eliminated from detailed study and why, and include a No Action alternative.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is a critical step in the alternative development process. The SWISP Project alternative development process involved collaboration with stakeholders, including cooperating and participating agencies, and engineering and conceptual design analyses. During the scoping period from April – May 2020, Reclamation asked for public and agency input on the scope of the analysis and for alternatives to be considered. Reclamation solicited comments through various meetings including a web-based virtual public meeting room and live question and answer teleconference (shown in the image below).

 

Reclamation coordinated with cooperating and participating agencies to refine a list of reasonable alternatives and a comprehensive suite of Project elements and screened each element to determine which would be carried forward for combination into complete alternatives and detailed analysis. The screening process is detailed in the SWISP Project Alternatives Compilation Report.

For more information of Scoping and the Alternatives Development process, please see Chapter 2, Section 2.2 Alternatives Development Process and Section 2.3 Alternative Screening of the SWISP Project Draft EIS.

 

The public scoping period ended on May 26, 2020. Reclamation analyzed the scoping comments it received and published a Scoping Report in June 2020. The description of the scoping process can be found in the scoping report and on the Reclamation SWISP Project website Scoping page. Those comments related to alternatives were carried forward into alternatives development.

 
 
 

For more information on the SWISP EIS, please contact Jason Sutter (208-378-5390, BOR-SHA-PNRLSWISP@usbr.gov).

To be added or removed from the mailing list, please contact Megan Stone (303-447-7160, megan.stone@empsi.com).