(b) Wetland Functional Assessment and Impact Analysis, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Master Plan Update Improvements (1999), cited on p.2 of the Notice;

(c) Natural Resource Mitigation Plan, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Master Plan Update Improvements (July 1999), cited on p.4 of the Notice.

 

2.3.2.  Inaccurate Information as to Other Documents

The Notice gave inadequate or confusing information as to other documents:

 

·         No available document was identified in the Notice as the actual revised application.

 

·         There is no indication that any of the three referenced documents contain appendices, or encompass subjects other than those indicated by their titles.

 

·         The Natural Resource Mitigation Plan (item (c) above) was a draft dated July 1999.  That draft has now been superseded by a draft dated August 1999.

 

2.3.3.  Documents Not Listed 

A number of other relevant documents containing critical information about the revised application, and evidently being considered by the Ecology and the Corps in this process, have come to light since the issuance of the Notice.  They should have been identified in the Notice, so that ALL members of the public (not just those with consultants and staff who could pursue requests for disclosure of public documents and other special inquiries) could be fully apprised of the details of the complete application at the start of the comment period.  On 16 November, three calendar days after the expiration of the original comment period, the Corps issued a news release listing the following documents NOT mentioned in the Notice.  These newly revealed documents are listed in the Release as follows:

 

1.       Geotechnical Engineering Report, 404 Permit Support. Third Runway Embankment, Sea-Tac International Airport, Prepared for HNTB Corporation and the Port of Seattle.

 

2.       Review Draft, Preliminary Comprehensive Stormwater Management Plan, Master Plan Update Improvements, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, by Parametrix, Inc., November 1999 (3 volumes)

 

3.       Revised Draft, Biological Assessment, Master Plan Update Improvements, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, by Parametrix, Inc., November 1999

 

4.       Draft Wetlands Re-evaluation Document, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Master Plan Update Improvements, prepared by Port of Seattle, August 1999

 

5.       Supplemental Airport Site Wetland and Stream Analysis, prepared for Port of Seattle by Parametrix, Inc., November 1999

 

6.       Revised Draft, Wildlife Hazard Management Plan, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, developed by Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in cooperation with U.S., Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, November 1999

 

That is a total of six additional documents, not listed in the Notice.  Put another way, twice as many documents were mentioned in the News Release as were mentioned in the original notice -- and the News Release is dated only 13 days before the expiry of the extended comment period.  Even if the release had been received on the date it bears, commenters would still have had only nine working days to review the six new documents and prepare comments on them.

 

Not mentioned in the Notice or in the News Release, but relevant to the pending application is the Dissolved Oxygen Deicing Study dated August 1999, prepared for the applicant by Cosmopolitan Engineering Group.  That study brings the list of relevant but unmentioned documents to seven.

 

It is to be noted that the first document, according to the News Release, was included as Appendix B in the Revised Draft, Wetland Functional Assessment and Impact Analysis, Master Plan Update Improvements, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, by Parametrix, Inc., August 1999.  We question whether anyone would have supposed that a geo-technical engineering report would be contained within an analysis of wetland functions.

 

2.3.4.  Location of Corps' Office 

The true physical location of the Corps' office was not stated in the Notice.  The Notice indicated that the documents referred to therein were available for review at the office of the Corps at Post Office Box 3755, Seattle, Washington, 98124.  The physical location of the Corps' offices is known not to be at ZIP 98124.  Anyone seeking the Corps at that location would find only the new Terminal Station of the Postal Service, on Fourth South, in Seattle.  The address provided for the Corps in the local telephone directory (46735 E. Marginal Way S., Seattle) is non-existent, and impossible. 

 

2.3.5.  Missing Documents

Not only did the Notice not present a fair statement of the documents that are encompassed in the Application but also several of those documents were missing, not available from the Corps, at the time of the Notice.  The News Release issued November 16, 1999, refers to four documents that were not in existence at the time of the issuance of the Notice.[i]  Thus, until mid-November) even if a commenter had found his way to the Corps' office (after a fruitless trip to Terminal Station), such commenter would not have been able to review the following documents:

 

1.   Review Draft, Preliminary Comprehensive Stormwater Management Plan, Master Plan Update Improvements, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, by Parametrix, Inc., November 1999 (3 volumes)

 

2.   Revised Draft, Biological Assessment, Master Plan Update Improvements, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, by Parametrix, Inc., November 1999

 

3.   Supplemental Airport Site Wetland and Stream Analysis, prepared for Port of Seattle by Parametrix, Inc., November 1999

 

4.   Revised Draft, Wildlife Hazard Management Plan, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, developed by Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in cooperation with U.S., Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, November 1999

 

2.3.6.  Missing Documents Not Available for Review 

The missing documents referred to in the immediately preceding section were not actually available for review in the ordinary sense of the term, or in a sense appropriate to these proceedings.  The Corps then apparently took the position that to obtain access to them members of the public would have to submit a request under the Federal Freedom of Information Act, which would take a minimum of 10 days for fruitful response![ii]  Ordinarily, in our experience, when documents relevant to a pending proceeding are said to be "available" for public review, they are actually present at the agency's place of business, and are available on demand during business hours.  Having to submit a public-disclosure request for such documents is unprecedented.

 

2.3.7.  Late Documents

As will be seen from the foregoing discussion, numerous documents were identified to the public very late in the proceeding -- AFTER the one, truncated public hearing, and AFTER the publicly announced deadline for submitting written comments.  This situation has created great -- and needless -- difficulties for the public.

2.3.8.  Problems for the General Public

How is the interested public supposed to make meaningful comments on this highly complex matter, when important aspects of the Application are not available, or become available very late in the proceeding?  For many ordinary citizens with an interest, preparing for and then attending a four-hour hearing in another city (without an opportunity to speak) is about as much time and concentrated attention as they can bring to bear on this issue in any period of a few weeks.  To have to start again, each time that another batch of documents, or individual document, is revealed or replaced, is unduly burdensome.  To prepare oral or written comments with the relevant documents not available is frustrating, and ultimately is fruitless.  The site of the hearing, the same as for the hearing on the prior application, was selected to accommodate a large crowd, and that the auditorium was filled to capacity, with numerous would-be attendees turned away.  The Corps is reminded that many would-be commenters were not accorded an opportunity to speak.

 

2.3.9.  Needless Burdens on Interested Public Groups

For organizations with the resources to hire legal counsel, technical experts, and staff, the result of this messy process has been a series of false starts and aborted work, a great waste of resources.  RCAA is grateful that extensions for filing written comments have been granted, as various new documents came to light and urgent requests for extension have been made.  But each extension has been a very short one, so short that it is meaningless to think that more individual comments from the public can come in timely, should we find the resources to notify that constituency a second, third, fourth time about the newest version of the Application and supporting documents, about he newest comment deadline.  As a practical matter, by the time each such suppositious notice could be prepared, mailed, and received, the next extension would already have gone past.  This problem is exacerbated by the practice of the Corps and Ecology of setting different dates for comment periods -- THAT problem, at least, should be subject to a quick, easy, general and permanent correction.

 

2.3.10.            Superseded Documents 

Another problem in this proceeding, a very considerable difficulty for individuals, and a non-trivial problem for interested groups, is that key documents have been superseded during the course of the proceedings, sometimes without notice.  In preparing to outline these comments, our task force found that it first had to compile its own bibliography of supporting documents, and to undertake a certain amount of research to determine which version of various documents is the current one; we are still without assurance that later revisions, or final versions as distinguished from drafts, will not be substituted at the last minute, with no notice. For example, we currently have in our possession a report titled "Wetland Functional Assessment and Impact Analysis" dated July 1999, a report titled "Wetland Functional Assessment and Impact Analysis" dated August 1999, a report titled "Wetland Functional Assessment and Impact Analysis"  (Revised Draft) dated August 1999, and a report titled "Wetlands Reevaluation Document" dated August 1999. 

 

2.3.11.            Responsibility; Solution

All these problems were caused initially by the slipshod work of the Applicant, which has had all the time in the world to do its job right.  The third-runway project has been in the planning process at the Port or Seattle as early as 1989 and the Port has had 10 years to do the necessary work for this proceeding.  There was no deadline imposed on Applicant (Port) for submission of the application, only a deadline imposed on the public for response.  We do not profess to know whether Ecology or the Corps is under any obligation to return the revised application to the Applicant in light of its incompleteness. We did attempt to communicate with the Corps and Ecology prior to issuance of the public notice to inform both agencies of the fatal flaws and unresolved issues in the Port's application that were revealed through a recent information request that our organization filed with Ecology.[iii]  In any event, it is clear that the Application was grossly incomplete, and that the public-hearing process has been tainted by the incompleteness of the Notice and of the Application.  It would be best to reject the application or to require the Applicant to withdraw and to resubmit.  At the very least, the Corps should convene another public hearing after a new Notice, which should be sent to every person and organization who signed in at the 3 November hearing, or who has submitted a written comment, or who has made inquiry of the Corps about this process.

 

2.3.12.            Incomplete and Inaccurate Documents

Sad to say, even at this writing, the documents that have been identified to date are incomplete and inaccurate.  Further references to incompleteness and inaccuracies will be made seriatim in the discussion of various technical matters infra.  But a few glaring omissions may be mentioned here:

 

1.   Fill.  The problems of mining and bringing fill materials to the site are as yet not adequately dealt with -- where WILL the fill come from?  Will it be contaminated with arsenic?  lead?  cadmium?  other unacceptable contaminants?  What will be the impacts of the mining?  the transport?  the emplacement?

 

2.   Purpose.  The purpose of the project is frequently misstated in the papers now at hand, apparently in an effort to make the Project seem more important than it is.  For example, the numerous drawings included in the Notice state that the purpose of the project is to "meet public need for efficient regional air transportation facility to meet anticipated future demand".  This is wrong, or else all the environmental paperwork prepared and submitted by the Project's proponents to date has been wrong.  The purpose of the project, as stated hitherto, is to build a part-time, bad-weather, dependent runway to obviate alleged arrival delays; it has been repeatedly stated by the Project's proponents that the project will NOT result in increased numbers of passengers or increased numbers of scheduled commercial jet aircraft using the Airport.  "Demand" will remain the same whether or not the Project goes forward.  "Capacity" will remain the same whether or not the Project goes forward.  Thus it follows that the Project is NOT intended to meet future "demand".  This is neither a demand-driven project nor a capacity-enhancing project. 

 

This was an important issue in the environmental reviews of the whole Master Plan Update.  It seemed to many commenters to defy common sense that a new runway would not result in more air travel, and, thus, in more adverse impacts.  See, generally 6 FEIS App. T., seriatim.  The FAA and the Port maintained throughout that the new runway would not increase demand, would not increase capacity, and would therefore not create new adverse impacts in such areas as noise intrusion, air pollution from jet-engine exhausts, and depression real-property values.  At best, according to the official analysis, the new runway would reduce some part of the delays experienced by travelers using commercial airlines (and that is a highly debatable point, addressed infra).  On the basis of that analysis, the various environmental impact statements stoutly refused to look at any increased adverse impacts on the general community.  This assertion by FAA and Port has now been tested and upheld in Superior Court and the Court of Appeals, as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Therefore, the present Application is in error in its description of the purpose of the Project.

 

A full discussion in support of the official view is found in the first general response by the Port and FAA to the comments on the DEIS, Appendix R, p. R-2 and seq.  (That this subject was addressed in the very first response indicates its importance.)  The discussion is encapsulated in the opening paragraph of part (3) (Conclusion) of Response I, at p. R-5:

 

(3)        Conclusion

 

If the proposed new runway and other facility improvements are not constructed, the growth in demand for air travel would continue to occur as would the number of aircraft operations, because it is expected that the Region [defined elsewhere as King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap Counties] would to experience growth in population and income.  It is theoretically possible for Sea-Tac to accommodate more than 380,000 aircraft operations per year, even though the accompanying delays would be significant, especially in poor weather conditions.  Therefore, it is the professional judgment of the FAA, the Port and its technical consultants that it is reasonable to assume for the purposes of this environmental analysis that the same number of operations would occur with and without the proposed runway.

 

Thus, in evaluating this very expensive and environmentally damaging proposal the Corps and Ecology should bear in mind that it is not intended to increase capacity or to meet demand.  The purpose is misstated in the Application.  Whether there is a significant delay problem is addressed infra.

 

2.3.13.            Selective Release of Documents 

It became evident at the public hearing on 3 November that some documents had been made available to the Applicant's experts but not to the public.  This comment will focus on just one example.  Several individual commenters remarked on the sketchiness of the description of the Great Wall that the Port proposes to build where the runway embankment would come closest to Miller Creek.  The Application contained only two references to the Wall, both of them in drawings that were included in the Application, specifically sheets 24 and 27.  There was no text mentioning the Wall in the public notice.  To learn of the existence of the proposal for construction of the Wall, readers had to review the two drawings in considerable detail.  More than a few commenters did so.  They found that the first, sheet 24, is a plan view, labeled "Location of replacement drainage channel and swales along the West side of the third runway embankment, south half".  The Wall is not mentioned in the caption.  However, the Wall appears as a series of heavy parallel lines, running in a vertical direction in the drawing, labeled as "retaining wall".  The second drawing, sheet 27, is a cross-section, and is labeled "Cross section B-B´ of the replacement drainage channel collection swale and third runway embankment".  The Wall is shown as a series of heavy black lines punctuated by small white spaces within the borders of the heavy black lines.  The drawing indicates that at the particular cross-section the wall is planned with three setbacks.  With some arithmetic, the viewer can determine that at the particular point shown, the Wall is about 133 feet high, base to top of the last vertical segment.  It is impossible to guess at the method of construction. 

 

The proposal might be to build the Wall of mud bricks, sand bags, Lego blocks, depleted uranium slugs, concrete, palm-tree logs, plywood, cinder blocks, sheets of armor plate -- anything.  No bracing, drainage, reinforcement, is shown or suggested.  Not surprisingly, these drawings were condemned as an inadequate description of this most daunting part of the overall proposal.  Experts appeared -- seemingly as good-hearted citizens -- to say that the Wall was just fine.  It was evident that some details of the Wall's proposed construction had been leaked to them.  The members of the public were made to look like ignoramuses -- but they were relying on the representations made to them by the Corps and Ecology as to the available information. 

 

Let us quote from the Notice:  "Interested parties are hereby notified that a revised application has been received … for certain work described below and shown on the enclosed drawings."  Not a word appears that any additional information about the work is available -- except in the three document references that we discuss in §2.3.1 supra, which do not mention the Wall at all.  It turns out (as a citizen learned by making inquiry of the 'volunteer' engineering experts after the close of the hearing) that there is some description of the Wall in the document, "Wetland Functional Assessment and Impact Analysis".  Who would have thought to find a discussion of the proposed method of building the Wall in a discussion of wetlands impacts?  Wouldn't that be found in a document that talks about the runway embankment, or the Wall? 

 

Well, it turns out that the discussion is not even in the main document.  Rather, it is in Appendix B of a document titled "Geotechnical Engineering Report for Permit Support".  Again, who would think that a report on the engineering and construction features of a Wall -- a dam -- would be in a Report on wetlands?  But with the clue given by the engineers remaining in the auditorium at the end of the hearing, we learned for the first time what the experts were talking about.  The mysterious "embassy wall" turns out to be an "MSE wall". "MSE" turns out to be jargon for "mechanically stabilized earth"  A rudimentary description of "MSE Walls" is found at p.9. in the Appendix.  It would have been not only a convenience but also a courtesy for the Corps and Ecology to reveal the existence of this document before the 3 November hearing.  Most of the individuals who commented on Wall-construction matters will not learn till long after the fact that there is some description, however sketchy, in a document held by the Corps.  They will not know that some of their concerns about the inadequate discussion of drainage under the Wall are discussed in a document held by the Corps.

 

We also learned by a perusal of Appendix B (Hart Crowser 1999, p. 12) that those consultants were privy to yet more undisclosed documents.  These documents are described in the reference section of the appendix as:

 

1.   Hart Crowser, 1999. "Subsurface Conditions Data Report, 404 Permit Support, Third Runway Embankment, Sea-Tac International Airport".  Draft prepared for HNTB Corporation, July.

 

2.   Hart Crowser, 1998b. "Approach to Stability Assessment".  Internal basis of design memorandum for the Third Runway project.  August 18.

 

3.   Hart Crowser, 1998c.  "Base Preparation Stability Analysis".  Internal basis of design memorandum for the Third Runway project.  August 13.

 

4.   AGI Technologies, 1998.  "Geotechnical Design Recommendations, Phase 1 Embankment Construction, Third Runway Project, Sea-Tac International Airport, SeaTac, Washington".  Prepared for HNTB Corporation, January 22.

 

5.   CivilTech Corporation, 1997.  "Geotechnical Report, South 154^th Street/156th way Relocation, SeaTac International Airport, SeaTac, Washington."  Prepared for Kato & Warren/HNTB and Port of Seattle, October 27.

 

None of these underlying documents has yet been available to the public for review and comment, though they should have been referred to in the Notice.  For further comments on this matter, see § 2.4  Piecemealing, infra.

 

2.4. Piecemealing

A recurring problem in this third-runway affair, dating back far before the involvement of the Corps and Ecology, is "piecemealing" of permit applications and environmental reviews.  That problem exists in this proceeding.

 

2.4.1.  What IS the Project under Review?

Let's begin with the big picture. The Port of Seattle has ambitious plans for huge capital construction projects at the Airport. This ambition to dominate the market for commercial air travel is clearly expressed in the environmental impact statements published over the last decade.  The projects are reviewed in best detail in Technical Report 8, prepared as the basis for a portion of the Master Plan Update EIS prepared by P&D Aviation dated January 1996.  The third runway is an integral part of this construction program, which includes elements of repair, replacement, upgrade and enhancement, and outright expansion.  The reader is referred to this Technical Report for detail, but some of the significant elements include:

 

·         Completion of RSA upgrades, existing runways

·         Expansion of Concourse A

·         Overhaul of Satellite Transit System

·         New on-site hotel

·         Relocation of So. 156^th Way and 154^th St. So.

·         Midfield overnight aircraft parking apron

·         New FAA air-traffic control tower

·         Adding 1700 spaces to parking structure

·         New employee parking lot [actually intended as overflow storage for car-leasing firms]

·         Changes to interior circulation roadways

·         Expansion of main terminal

·         Another increase in parking spaces at parking structure

·         New hydrant fueling system

·         Various changes in main air-cargo area

·         New runway -- 'third' runway' -- and associated taxiways

·         New airport maintenance facility

·         New North Terminal to serve new runway

·         New people-mover system to serve new North Terminal

·         New North unit parking structure (3000 spaces)

·         New cargo facility for United Airlines

·         A third expansion of the main parking garage

·         Expansion of North unit parking structure

·         More and more employee parking

·         Relocation of Delta's cargo facilities

·         Extension of Runway 34R

 

This impressive array of capital projects was estimated in the Port's Technical Report No. 8 issued January 1996 to have a cost estimated between $ 1,374,459,000 to $ 1,420,738,000 dollars, that is between $1.3 and $1.4 billion dollars (depending on selections of various alternatives).  More recent estimates by Port Commissioner Pat Davis and by other Port insiders put the total cost at between $6 billion and $10 billion (statements during the 1999 primary election campaign for Seattle Port Commissioners). 

 

This long list does not include:

 

·         Relocation/redevelopment of 24^th/28^th So. (South access road to southern end of Sea-Tac airport site)

·         Extension of SR 509

·         New transit station at Sea-Tac airport (a project of the Regional Transit Authority)

·         South Aviation Support Area (SASA)

·         Excavation, transport and delivery of fill material from Maury Island to the Sea-Tac site

·         Other excavation, transport and fill at the Sea-Tac site

·         Off-site mitigation

 

The first question raised by this long list is whether there are work elements that will have adverse environmental impacts that should be studied as a part of these proceedings.

 

We submit there are many and some that have as yet undefined cumulative and conflicting impacts if each of the individual projects proceed.  For example, the SR 509 and South Aviation Support Area (SASA) projects are in the same area. One project proposes moving Des Moines Creek, the other proposes bridging the creek.  Both projects impact wetlands.  The FAA claims in-basin wetland mitigation is OK for one project and not OK for the other. [iv]   According to one estimate the SR509 project could impact 12 acres of wetlands. [v] Ecology must consider the cumulative impacts of all these related projects in conjuction with the proponent's application. 

 

Next, observers should ask whether the Port would be embarked on most of the other projects if it were not pursuing the third runway?  Is the third runway truly intended for the limited purposes established in the official explanations?  It is hard to understand why an 8500-foot runway is being proposed for arrival-only purposes, for almost none of the aircraft now using the Airport or projected to use it in the future require such a long runway.[vi]  It is hard to understand why one would pump two billion dollars into the part-time runway described in the environmental impact statements and other publications of the FAA and POS.  It is even harder to understand why one would spend another half a billion for a part-time people mover and a part-time terminal to be used only to serve the third runway, that is, only during poor weather, and only for arrivals.  And on top of that, a special part-time parking structure.  This virtually amounts to renovating the existing Airport at great expense and at the same time building an auxiliary, part-time, airport overlapping the original airport both physically and operationally – with no gain in capacity. 

 

The Airport and FAA have yet to present a coherent explanation, or to describe what their plan for Seattle-Tac would be, if the third runway were not to be built.

 

These circumstances make it an uneasy task to describe just what IS and just what is NOT included in the present application (especially since the public notice did not identify an actual application submitted by the Port).  Is it the impacts of the third-runway embankment and runway pavement alone, without reference to all the other projects advocated for by the FEIS?  Or is it the whole package of “Seattle-Tacoma International Master Plan Update Improvements”, referred to so frequently in so many of the relevant documents?  Or is it some combination of embankment, pavement, and other capital projects?

 

One approach would be to include all Master Plan Update components that might have a discernible impact on the wetlands and open bodies of water West of the present Airport, and on the streams nourished by those wetlands, and on the coastal waters affected by the streams, and to consider as well the other impacts on the wetlands, and., impending from known or foreseeable activities.  This in the opinion of RCAA is the absolute least that the Corps and Ecology should consider in the pendent proceedings.  The expression “known or foreseeable activities” would include the SR 509 extension, all other road and highway work in the Miller Creek and Des Moines Creek drainage basins, all mandatory environmental clean-up activities on the present Airport campus and in the real property designated for acquisition by the Port as the site of the proposed runway.

 

The mandatory environmental clean-up activities are particularly troublesome, as will be seen in our detailed comments.

 

The present Application fails to include a number of the elements that the Corps and Ecology should be considering.  If allowed to stand, this will result in piecemeal consideration of one extremely large single project with a correspondence huge cumulative negative impact on the streams and wetlands the reviewing agencies will be unable to consider.  The law requires a coordinated consideration of these cumulative impacts.  While the Port has submitted a plethora of studies – few of which have been described to the general public and many of which were not readily available for review –the Port has not provided the public or the agencies a clear understanding of what is to be examined and what is to be ignored in this permit application process.  Our suggestion would be that a comprehensive conference be held by the Corps and Ecology, with the Port, the FAA, the State Department of Transportation, interested municipalities, and interested public groups all participating, to settle definitively what part of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Master Plan Update construction projects, associated highway projects, fill-mining, and environmental clean-ups, if any, will be included and excluded from this review, and thereafter to afford all interested parties a further opportunity to comment.  It needs no citation of authority to state that in environmental reviews ‘piecemealing’ is not an acceptable practice.  We have been and the agencies should be appalled by the extent that the Port has been allowed to sidestep comprehensive review of the cumulative impacts of its various projects at Sea-Tac. 

 

Fortunately, there is a legal requirement in conjunction with this process that prohibits Ecology from relegating cumulative impacts as a SEPA issue for the Port to address under its self-appointed SEPA lead agency status. Federal regulations associated with this application published in 40 CFR 230.10(a)4, point out that NEPA and SEPA review does not encompass the level of review the Corps and Ecology MUST undertake in considering the cumulative impacts of the proposed projects, alternatives, and other aspects of the proponents application.

 

2.4.2.  Piecemealing the Documentation 

A rather different form of piecemealing causes severe problems for ‘outside’ commenters, and ought to concern reviewing authorities, such as the Corps and Ecology.  That is the fragmentation of the documentation for the overall project and for the application.  As our discussion of the difficulties with the Notice shows (infra, § 2.1, especially §2.3.1, §2.3.3), the more one delves into this proceeding, the more documents not mentioned in the Notice come to light.   (1) It seems impossible to find a comprehensive discussion of the Project in one complete document.  (2) One cannot even find a document that encompasses a complete discussion of the construction of the Wall.  When one tracks down appendices to appendices, one finds there some reference to the construction of the Wall, and one then finds allusions to yet additional but uncited documents. 

 

This is not a new problem for RCAA in dealing with the Port of Seattle.  For example, during the scoping process for the environmental review of the Airport's Master Plan Update, RCAA filed scoping comments, and in the second bullet point, p.3 of those comments, we besought the Port not to rely on documents and studies that were not properly identified, etc.  Yet, as of the moment of this writing, we know of 10 documents that were prepared for that Update EIS that were not identified to the public in the DEIS, and some of which were not even in print till after the close of the comment period!  The existence of at least one such paper was apparent on close reading of the DEIS, but it was not cited as a reference, nor was there any indication of where it might be available for review.  We commented on that omission in our DEIS comment II-28, (6 FEIS, Appx T, p. 662) only to be told that it was the practice of the FAA to list references NOT in the DEIS but in an Administrative Record.  We learned of this only after publication of the FEIS.  5 FEIS, App. R, response R-1-6, p. R-21.  According to FAA, we should have guessed about this procedure -- why the FAA did not report this at the start of the process, or at the time of publication of the DEIS remains a mystery.  Of course, the FAA's use of that technique did not excuse the Port's failure to disclose relevant documents.  The DEIS was a joint publication of POS and FAA.  In other words, this is not a new issue for us with the Port -- and we see in the instant proceeding that they still are hiding the paperwork.  It will not be acceptable to be told by the Corps and Ecology at some later date that the agencies are building up an administrative record of undisclosed and non-available documents!

 

In the first instance, this situation is a flaw in the notification process.  The Corps, in conjunction with Ecology should prepare a Notice that is accurate and complete, with a straightforward section on references, or included documents.  As a corollary of the preparation of the Notice, the agencies should ensure that each of them has an adequate number of copies of such documents available for public review and, if need be, for purchase.  The Corps and Ecology should also ensure that the documents submitted in support of an application are considered to be in the public domain, and that each provides an adequate identification of its preparers.

 

At a more fundamental level, however, this is the result of piecemealing by the Applicant.  It may be administratively convenient to ask various experts or consultants (not necessarily the same thing!) to do bits and pieces of the work: RCAA itself has done this during various prior Airport proceedings.  But at some point -- before an application is filed, or when the presentation is to be made -- the work (ALL of the work) should be pulled together into comprehensive documents.  In earlier proceedings, studies done for RCAA were pulled together