203287 TP Final Vol 2.Ai
4.7 Cultural Resources 4.7 Cultural4.7 4. WSIP Facility Projects – Setting and Impacts 4.7 Cultural Resources Cultural resources include paleontological resources, archaeological resources, historical resources, and human remains. This section provides a program-level assessment of potential WSIP impacts on historical, paleontological, or archaeological resources that might be present in the vicinity of the WSIP projects and/or historic water system facilities. Programmatic mitigation measures to reduce or eliminate potentially significant impacts on these cultural resources are identified in this section and presented in detail in Chapter 6. This analysis does not identify specific cultural resources at each of the 22 WSIP facility project sites, although some previously identified cultural resources are located at or near those project sites. Site-specific analysis will be conducted as part of separate, project-level CEQA review for individual WSIP projects. 4.7.1 Setting and Resource Types Paleontological Setting Paleontological resources within the WSIP study area consist of the fossilized remains of plants and animals, including vertebrates (animals with backbones) and invertebrates (e.g., starfish, clams, ammonites, and coral marine). Fossils of microscopic plants and animals, or microfossils, are also considered in this analysis. The age and abundance of fossils depend on the location, topographic setting, and particular geologic formation in which they are found. The geologic formations containing the majority of fossils in the WSIP study area are considered geologically young; the oldest fossil-bearing formation dates to the Paleocene epoch (65 million years old). Most of the fossil-bearing geologic units in the WSIP study area were formed in ancient marine environments such as inland embayments, coastal areas, and extensive inland seas.
[Show full text]