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A GUIDE TO RETAIL IMPACT STUDIES <br />salaries paid locally, services contracted for locally, and donations made to local charities. Local <br />and regionally based businesses often produce a higher local premium than publicly held firms <br />because they usually rely more heavily on local services and retain a larger share of their profits <br />in the region. There are numerous methods for calculating this premium which vary from firm to <br />firm. This premium can help paint a fuller picture in an economic or fiscal impact analysis by <br />digging deeper into financial patterns of firms to see which firms keep more money local in the <br />long term. <br />General Environmental Impacts <br />Many jurisdictions require environmental and traffic impact analyses for any large development. <br />These are typically conducted separately from an economic impact analysis. <br />Maine's Informed Growth Act calls for including information on a range of environmental impacts <br />within the comprehensive impact study, with two substantial conditions. First, there must be <br />existing studies and data available. The analyst is not required to prepare an independent <br />environmental impact study, but only to survey what information is available from existing <br />studies, including the retailer's own traffic, wetland, and other impact studies that it submits as <br />part of its development permit application. Second, environmental impacts are to be identified <br />generally. <br />Because these issues are substantively different from the economic issues discussed <br />throughout this document, few firms with the relevant economic expertise would be qualified to <br />prepare detailed environment assessments. However, as the Informed Growth Act places limits <br />on the applicability and depth of these assessments, firms specializing in economic impact <br />analysis with a degree of in-house planning expertise should be well-equipped to handle these <br />tasks, including commenting, in general terms, on the impact the proposed development will <br />have on residential areas and on natural, recreational, and historic sites, and describing the key <br />findings of any relevant studies of the impacts of the proposed development on air and water <br />quality, plant and wildlife habitat, and other environmental conditions. <br />25 <br /> <br />