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