USACE.

• Position: Inside Alaska Business

The US Army Corps of Engineers-Alaska District published the Operational Draft Regional Guidebook for the Rapid Assessment of Wetlands in the North Slope Region of Alaska. It now is available for use by all permit applicants proposing projects within the Arctic Foothills and Arctic Coastal Plain region.

Also known as the North Slope Rapid Assessment, the tool eliminates the need for the region's permit applicants to develop independent methods for assessing project impacts. The document is designed to be used with the Alaska District's Credit-Debit Methodology. This system allows applicants to calculate debits from project impacts as well as credits for proposed mitigation.

The report uses established approaches to characterize regional wetlands, provides the rationale used to determine assessment scores, describes assessment variables used...