Resource and Land Investigations (RALI) Program:An Approach to Environmental Assessment with Application to Western Coal Development.

摘要

Use of the coal reserves in the western part of the U.S. is being considered as a possible means of achieving a measure of energy self-sufficiency. In addition to strip mining,the development of western coal can include mine-mouth electricity generation or coal gasification as well as the shipment of energy via unit trains,slurry pipelines,or overhead transmission lines. This report describes an approach for evaluating the environmental impacts of the various coal-development projects. Each project is composed of a number of activities and the primary as well as high-order impacts of these activites are linked by means of key-word cross referencing.