Environmental assessment reconstructions and improvement of various roadways and parking sites

Smith, Russell

At Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, the National Park Service (NPS) proposes to improve various roadways and to improve, relocate, and/or create parking sites within the Park. These roadways include: Route 501, Route 11 Grant Drive, Anderson Drive, Gordon Drive, Bloody Angle Drive, and Burnside Drive. This action is needed to rehabilitate the deteriorated road surfaces and address parking deficiencies as well as to improve visitor access to the Park’s historical sites. This Environmental Assessment (EA) prepared in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration, Eastern Federal Lands Highway Division, examines in detail the No Action Alternative and the Build Alternative (the National Park Service Preferred Alternative). The preferred alternative includes rehabilitation of the existing roadway service, obliterating East Angle Drive, and relocating, improving, and creating additional parking areas. The preferred alternative would have negligible or no impacts on wetlands, environmental justice, special status species, floodplains, socioeconomic environment, water quality, air quality, soundscape, geology and soils, ethnographic resources, park operations, sustainability, energy resources, prime and unique farmlands, and viewsheds. Minor impacts to cultural resources, vegetation, wildlife and wildlife habitat, visitor use and experience, and visitor conflicts and safety would result from the preferred alternative.