Last month, Col. Joe Miller of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers talked to Southwest Florida Business about the environmental impact study beginning in the area. Col. Miller took over the reigns as commander and district engineer on October 3 from Col. Terry Rice, who lay the current groundwork for the study.

Col. Miller arrives in Southwest Florida nearly 30 years ago to the day he left Miami. Fresh from a six-year stint at the Pentagon where he served as chief of the infrastructure task force for the Army's Quadrennial Defense Review Strategic Synchronization Cell, the colonel has served the military in various leadership roles since 1974.

John Hall, chief of the regulatory division, was also interviewed.

Col. Miller prefaces this interview by saying, "There's a lot of major development on the short-term horizon for Lee and Collier counties. Most of the development there will need (Corps) permits. We know from past permitting that there are repeating fundamental issues that arise that must be addressed in these developments: water quality issues, side runoff and natural movement to Estero Bay, a designated national estuary. There's surface water management that's intertwined with the water quality concerns, wetlands protection and appropriate mitigation for unavoidable impacts. Also a concern (is) habitat fragmentation, particularly as it relates to threatened and endangered species. ... The Corps, under the National Environmental Policy Act, has responsibility to analyze the environmental consequences of its permit decisions."

Southwest Florida Business: Is there any way this study will not occur?

Col. Joe Miller: Well, first of all this EIS provides the public with an opportunity to share with the Corps their feeling about a variety of issues in terms of our regulatory authority. This allows us to include the public in the process. It provides us an opportunity to analyze the issues and provide information on the environmental consequences of both the portions of the counties that are being looked at and identify alternatives.

I guess the bottom line answer is, I don't know of any reasons why we would not want to go forward with EIS.

SFB: Will you do a PEIS with or without cooperation from the counties?

JM: I believe I will do an EIS with or without the cooperation. I would like, however, for it to be with their cooperation. I think it provides for better government at all levels if we have their participation and support.

SFB: Is a PEIS a more regional study whereas an EIS is on one particular project?

JH: We have somewhat mistakenly been calling this a PEIS, which stands for programmatic EIS. I was under the impression, and I think even a few of our attorneys here were under the impression, that it was appropriate to call an EIS that covered a large--we don't know how large yet--geographical area, as more of a programmatic EIS. As we have looked a little more closely at the regulations that deal with environmental impact statements, we have come to realize that we should simply be calling this an environmental impact statement.

SFB: The cost of the EIS is estimated at what?

JH: We've estimated it at $500,000 or perhaps less.

SFB: Where is that money coming from, and how much do you have committed?

JH: That money is coming from the federal government. We have $75,000 currently committed from the EPA. We have a commitment of funding and participation from the Fish and Wildlife Service, but an exact amount has yet to be determined. To date the Corps of Engineers has committed to spending the money we have left over from last fiscal year and money we anticipate getting this fiscal year, probably close to $170,000-$180,000.

SFB: Are local taxpayers going to bear the burden of this cost?

JH: Only insofar as the money that we get comes from the regulatory appropriations from Congress and that in turn is paid by income tax (collected in) the United States.

JM: If the question is, is there going to be any extra taxes or levies against them as citizens, no.

SFB: How do you see the permitting procedure progressing during the study?

JH: I don't think there are any surprises here in the draft document that Lee County commission will be reviewing. We are committed to continue processing permit applications as we receive them. In fact, that's one of the reasons that we are being very careful to refer to the EIS as an environmental impact statement, not a programmatic environmental impact statement. because if you look at the federal guidelines on a programmatic environmental impact statement, it became clear that for legal purposes preparing a programmatic EIS would preclude us from making any decisions that are related to that particular program. So we certainly intend to continue to accept applications and process them.

SFB: A PEIS precludes you from making decisions?

JH: Yes, as I understand it. I'm not the lawyer who is making these fine distinctions, but a programmatic EIS is done on some federal programs, like federal aid assistance to something, and as long as you are doing a programmatic EIS on that federal aid program you do not actually award any federal aid until that programmatic EIS is completed. And so what we're doing is to be very careful to let everybody understand that we are looking at it not as a programmatic EIS but simply as an environmental impact statement to cover some as-yet-undetermined geographic area and look at those particular issues that are especially relevant to our regulatory decision-making process.

SFB: Do you have a geographical area in mind at this point?

JM: Not that I know of.

SFB: It's a regional thing.

JM: Yes. The bottom line behind all this is one, we want to do the right thing, and we want to help streamline our procedures so we can better service the public and two, doing what we're required to do by virtue of those various guidelines (under which the Corps operates) and that we have to make sure we adhere to.

SFB: Will any of the permits be held up in the Estero Bay watershed area and along the Estero River, or are those projects already permitted?

JH: We continue to accept applications to make permit decisions. It's hard to say, there could be some applications that if tendered that the issues associated with that particular application are central to the issue that we're trying to deal with in the EIS. We may feel that in certain situations the public and the decision-making process would be better served by completing the environmental impact statement, but it's virtually impossible to guess what that might be.

SFB: Are you going to be taking a separate look at an airport EIS?

JH: We really haven't talked with Col. Miller about any of the specific projects. The airport application perhaps is one that early on made us feel that we needed to do this larger EIS. At least at that time we were telling them that we thought that project b