DEIS Availability
The 90-day comment period on the Army Corps of Engineers' Draft Feasibility Report / Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) ended on September 6, 2012. Recently, we discovered that the DEIS is no longer available on the Corps website.
Although the comment period has ended, we felt that some people may want to read sections of the DEIS to clarify some issues mentioned on our Selected Commentary page. To serve these potential needs, we've made copies of the DEIS and its appendices available at the following links:
- Draft Feasibility Report / Environmental Impact Statement (22.4 MB PDF)
- DEIS Appendices (326.3 MB PDF)
The DEIS (544 pages) and its appendices (2268 pages) are long complicated documents. You may find the "Where in the DEIS can I find...?" (2.0 MB PDF) guide helpful in navigation.
Visual Simulations
In addition to the DEIS the Corps made available several "visual simulations" that depict various areas of Chatfield State Park as they appear today and as they might be expected to look 5 years after the reallocation project is completed. Like the DEIS, the visual simulations are also no longer available on the Corps website.
Several effects minimize the impact of the visual simulations provided by the Corps:
- Photographs of existing conditions are taken with a wide angle lens that flattens the scenes and reduces the apparent heights of trees that would be removed.
- Because photographs were taken at a time of year when trees were without leaves, the visual impact of the trees that would be removed is further reduced.
- In most cases the apparent effect of changing water levels was reduced by taking photographs from a location far from the water's edge.
We've made the Corps' visual simulations available at the following links:
- Kingfisher Area (3.1 MB PDF)
- North Boat Ramp (3.6 MB PDF)
- Plum Creek (4.3 MB PDF)
- Swim Beach (5.6 MB PDF)
For comparison, you may want to look at the visual simulations produced for SaveChatfield.org.