"Mitigation"

According to the CEQ regulations (40 CFR 1508.20), mitigation means:

  • Avoiding impact altogether
  • Minimizing impact
  • Limiting the degree or magnitude of action
  • Rectifying impact
  • Repairing, rehabilitating, restoring
  • Reducing or eliminating impact over time
  • Preservation and maintenance activities
  • Compensating for the impact
  • Replacing or providing substitutes

In terms of cultural resources, this definition can clearly embrace things like:

  • Relocating a project to avoid impact on an archeological site, a historic district, or an area of traditional use
  • Reducing the scale or altering the design of a project to reduce visual impacts
  • Restoring impacted sites, landscapes, or buildings
  • Implementation of preservation plans and maintenance programs that reduce impacts over time
  • Compensating for impacts, for example by rehabilitating some buildings in exchange for demolishing others or conducting archeological data recovery
  • Replacing lost plant gathering areas by providing traditional plant gatherers with access to other similar areas