Applied Ecosystem Services, LLC

Regulators require collection and submission of baseline data prior to permit issuance (e.g., NEPA documents or other operating permits), and continuing data to evaluate compliance with permit conditions. The reason is the need to determine whether the proposed project might have unacceptable environmental impacts, and whether operations have such impacts. It is common for analyses accompanying reported data to be inappropriate or superficial and not answer two critical questions. Why do observations and measurements have the values they do?

It is common to read statements like this: “… EPA found that 20 percent of 331 wells tested had nitrate levels above federal drinking water standards …” Such statements contain no useful information because they lack context. To put this statement in context we need much more information. For example: where are these 20% located in relation to all 331 wells, what time of year were these high nitrate concentrations observed, and how frequently did they occur?

Water quality permit compliance monitoring data with concentration values exceeding statutory thresholds are assumed to result from permitted operations. Fines or penalties might be levied; remedial actions might be imposed. That permitted activities were responsible has not been demonstrated by the submitted data. This is particularly true when permitted activities are dispersed as mining, logging, and ranching are. Missing in permit compliance monitoring report evaluations is the context for those constituent values that exceeded thresholds.

Have you missed a permit compliance monitoring or reporting event and been financially penalized? Has your environmental impact statement approval been delayed by regulators’ paralysis by analysis or by many challenges from project opponents? Has your farm or livestock operation been accused of degrading a nearby water body although you comply with discharge permit monitoring requirements? Have you suffered from the “battle of competing experts” in litigation confusing finders of fact on what your environmental data reveal about the case?

Have you missed a permit compliance monitoring or reporting event and been financially penalized? Has your environmental impact statement approval been delayed by regulators’ paralysis by analysis or by many challenges from project opponents? Has your farm or livestock operation been accused of degrading a nearby water body although you comply with discharge permit monitoring requirements? These situations, and many similar ones, share two underlying issues: lack of effective explanation to decision-makers of ecosystem complexity, and inappropriate models used to analyze environmental data.