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Environmental Impact of W ind Projects 253

c. Move to the next tier because a determination cannot be
made in the current tier. In the subsequent tier the follow-
ing are performed: Additional data collection and analysis;
redesign of the project for mitigation of impact; and design
and execution of postconstruction monitoring.

5
The five tiers are listed below. The first three tiers are during the
preconstruction evaluation phase, while the last two are during the
postconstruction monitoring phase.
Tier 1: Preliminary evaluation or screening of potential sites.
Akin to determining if a site has sufficient wind with publicly
available data, this tier is a first look at screening sites in terms
of sensitivity to wildlife. Questions that must be answered
are:
a. Does the site contain species of concern or their habitat?
b. Does site contain areas where development is precluded
by law, or areas designated as sensitive by scientifically
credible information?
c. Does site contain areas of wildlife congregation?
d. Does site contain sensitive species that need contiguous
blocks of habitat? If the answer is yes to any of the above
questions, then the site should be precluded unless there
is good plan to significantly reduce the adverse impact to
wildlife.
Tier 2: Site characterization studies. This involves site visit and
a more in-depth review of literature, data, and information
from local organizations to answer the questions posed in
tier 1. In addition, specific species that are at risk in the pro-
posed site are identified. If the answer is yes to any of the tier
2 questions, then the site should be abandoned because there
is a high probability of adverse impact. If the answer is no
to all the questions, based on sufficient information, then the
wind project may proceed with no additional tiers. Finally, if
answer is inconclusive for at least one question, because of
insufficient data or the uncertainty is high, then proceed to
tier 3.
Tier 3: Field studies to document site wildlife conditions and
predict project impacts. In this tier, rigorous quantitative sci-
entific field studies are conducted to assess the impact. Simi-
lar set of questions as in tier 1 and 2 are answered, but with
scientifically rigorous onsite data collection related to abun-
dance, behavior, and site use by species of interest. The data
is analyzed and risk of impact is computed. If there is suffi-
cient data to determine, with high degree of certainty, that the