SBCT Final EIS - Govsupport.us

Chapter 5 – Environmental Consequences• Educating contractors and their employees about the need to wear weed-free clothes andmaintaining weed-free vehicles when coming onto the construction site and avoiding introducingnonnative species to the project site.• Preparing a one-page insert to construction contract bids informing potential bidders of therequirement.• Inspecting and washing all military vehicles at wash rack facilities prior to leaving SBMR,KTA/KLOA, or PTA to minimize the spread of weeds, such as fountain grass, and animal(invertebrate) relocations.Additional Mitigation 2: The Army would prevent any weeds brought in from becoming establishedby rigorously monitoring using transects and roadside surveys and eradicating new weeds using mosteffective means known specific to each of the invasive species.• The Army would provide education regarding cleaning vehicles and field gear (these educationmaterials will be Service approved).• The Army would wash vehicles in wash rack facilities prior to returning from the training areas,to minimize weeds (e.g., fountain grass).• Persons and equipment coming from foreign countries must go through U. S. Department ofAgriculture and U.S. Customs inspections before coming into the United States.• The Army would train and require Soldiers to clean their gear and vehicles when first arriving inHawaii and prior to moving from installation to installation, as well as when moving from islandto island.Impact 3: Impacts to Threatened and Endangered Species. Construction of a BAX at SBMR wouldtemporarily increase human presence and activity at construction sites. The new ranges are proposedin areas that are currently disturbed lands or active ranges, so the potential to impact a listed species islow. Mitigation would decrease the potential for impacts to sensitive species and their habitats duringconstruction activities to a less than significant level.Regulatory and Administrative Mitigation 3: All species management in regards to impacts would befollowed as described the Oahu and Hawaii Biological Opinions (USFWS 2003b and 2003d).Additional mitigation measures that would be implemented by the Army are discussed in RangeConstruction above.Less Than Significant ImpactsImpacts to vegetation. Range construction at SBMR and PTA would occur. Habitats within theSBMR are, for the most part, disturbed natural and introduced landscapes. Activities in this areawould mostly affect nonnative species adapted to stressed or nonnative environments. The majority ofthe area planned for the new ranges is existing disturbed ranges, so impacts to native vegetation areexpected to be negligible. Vegetation within the proposed footprints of these projects, whichprimarily includes nonnative grasses, shrubs, and pineapple fields, would be removed. Followingconstruction of the proposed ranges, the Army would seed disturbed areas with native or noninvasivevegetation.Nonnative vegetation communities and barren lava prevail in the areas of proposed construction atPTA. As mentioned in the affected environment section, these communities are all affected byFebruary 2008 5-49 2/25th SBCT Final EIS