Project Report on Environment Impact Assessment

The Need for EIA
Every anthropogenic activity has some impact on the environment. More often it is harmful to the environment than benign. However, mankind as it is developed today cannot live without taking up these activities for his food, security and other needs. Consequently, there is a need to harmonise developmental activities with the environmental concerns. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is one of the tools available with the planners to achieve the above-mentioned goal.
It is desirable to ensure that the development options under consideration are sustainable. In doing so, environmental consequences must be characterised early in the project cycle and accounted for in the project design.
The objective of EIA is to foresee the potential environmental problems that would arise out of a proposed development and address them in the project's planning and design stage. The EIA process should then allow for the communication of this information to:
(a) the project proponent;
(b) the regulatory agencies; and,
(c) all stakeholders and interest groups.

EIA integrates the environmental concerns in the developmental activities right at the time of initiating for preparing the feasibility report.In doing so, it can enable the integration of environmental concerns and mitigation measures in project development. EIA can often prevent future liabilities or expensive alterations in project design.
Process of EIA 1. Screening

On 23rd May 1986, the Government of India enacted the Environment (Protection) Act. Environmental Impact Assessment was made statutory to achieve the objectives of the Act. A notification was issued on 27th January 1994 making environmental impact assessment statutory for 30 activities. This notification was subsequently amended on 4th May 1994, 10th April 1997 and 27th January. This is most important legislation governing environmental impact assessment in India.

Screening is done to see whether a project requires environmental clearance as per the statutory notifications. Screening Criteria are based upon: * Scales of investment * Type of development * Location of development

2. Scoping Scoping is a process of detailing the terms of reference of EIA. It has to be done by the consultant in consultation with the project proponent and guidance, if need be, from Impact Assessment Agency.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests has published guidelines for different sectors, which outline the significant issues to be addressed in the EIA studies. Quantifiable impacts are to be assessed on the basis of magnitude, prevalence, frequency and duration and non-quantifiable impacts (such as aesthetic or recreational value), significance is commonly determined through the socio-economic criteria. After the areas, where the project could have significant impact, are identified, the baseline status of these should be monitored and then the likely changes in these on account of the construction and operation of the proposed project should be predicted. 3. Baseline Data Collection Baseline data describes the existing environmental status of the identified study area. The site-specific primary data should be monitored for the identified parameters and supplemented by secondary data if available.

4. Impact Prediction Impact prediction is a way of mapping the environmental consequences of the significant aspects of the project and its alternatives. Environmental impact can never be predicted with absolute certainty and this is all the more reason to consider all possible factors and take all possible precautions for reducing the degree of uncertainty. The following impacts of the project should be assessed: 1. Air * Changes in ambient levels and ground level concentrations due to total emissions from point, line and area sources * Effects on soils, materials, vegetation, and human health 2. Noise * Changes in ambient levels due to noise generated from equipment and movement of vehicles * Effect on fauna and human health 3. Water * Availability to competing users * Changes in quality * Sediment transport * Ingress of saline water 4. Land * Changes in land use and drainage pattern * Changes in land quality including effects of waste disposal * Changes in shoreline/riverbank and their stability 5. Biological * Deforestation/tree-cutting and shrinkage of animal habitat. * Impact on fauna and flora (including aquatic species if any) due to contaminants/pollutants * Impact on rare and endangered species, endemic species, and migratory path/route of animals. * Impact on breeding and nesting grounds 6. Socio-Economic * Impact on the local community including demographic changes. * Impact on economic status * Impact on human health. * Impact of increased traffic

5. AssessmentofAlternatives, Delineation of Mitigation Measuresand Environmental Impact Assessment Report For every project, possible alternatives should be identified and environmental attributes compared. Alternatives should cover both project location and process technologies. Alternatives should consider no project option also. Alternatives should then be ranked for selection of the best environmental option for optimum economic benefits to the community at large. Once alternatives have been reviewed, a mitigation plan should be drawn up for the selected option and is supplemented with an Environmental Management Plan (EMP) to guide the proponent towards environmental improvements. The EMP is a crucial input to monitoring the clearance conditions and therefore details of monitoring should be included in the EMP. An EIA report should provide clear information to the decision-maker on the different environmental scenarios without the project, with the project and with project alternatives. Uncertainties should be clearly reflected in the EIA report.

6. Public Hearing

Law requires that the public must be informed and consulted on a proposed development after the completion of EIA report. Any one likely to be affected by the proposed project is entitled to have access to the Executive Summary of the EIA. The affected persons may include: * Bonafide local residents; * Local associations; * Environmental groups: active in the area * Any other person located at the project site / sites of displacement They are to be given an opportunity to make oral/written suggestions to the State Pollution Control Board. 7. Decision Making

Decision making process involve consultation between the project proponent (assisted by a consultant) and the impact assessment authority (assisted by an expert group if necessary). The decision on environmental clearance is arrived at through a number of steps including evaluation of EIA and EMP. 8. Monitoring the Clearance Conditions Monitoring should be done during both construction and operation phases of a project. This is not only to ensure that the commitments made are complied with but also to observe whether the predictions made in the EIA reports were correct or not. Where the impacts exceed the predicted levels, corrective action should be taken. Monitoring will enable the regulatory agency to review the validity of predictions and the conditions of implementation of the Environmental Management Plan (EMP).

Non Compliance : Negative Impact

EIA is intended to prevent or minimize potentially adverse environmental impacts and enhance the overall quality of the project.

The negative consequences which follow the non-compliance of EIA are: 1. Higher Project cost in long term.
Environment Impact Analysis is a must for reducing project cost. EIA allows the likely significant environmental effects of a project to be identified and to be avoided, remedied or minimised at an early stage. Hence if a company is not doing the environment assessment properly then it is bound to cost it heavily in long run.

2. Decreased project acceptance.
The objective of EIA is to foresee the potential environmental problems that would arise out of a proposed development and address them in the project's planning and design stage. And therefore if companies do not do proper assessment of the impacts of their project on environment then it becomes difficult to face the impacts at a later stage and the acceptance of the project becomes difficult. It becomes difficult to handle the consequences.

3. Reduced project design and reduced efficiencies across the organization.
It is desirable to ensure that the development options under consideration are sustainable. In doing so, environmental consequences must be characterised early in the project cycle and accounted for in the project design. And thus the efficiencies across organization also reduces.

4. Wastage of technology and return on technology investments.
Being negligent with EIA process can cause technology to go waste with no return on investments.

5. Poor information , data protection and security. EIA assessment is very essential if a company wants its data to be protected and information flow to be in desired way. The assessment highlights all the possible turns the project at hand can take and thus prepares us for them in time. 6. Inadequate coordination among internal and external stakeholders. One of the negative consequences of missing out on EIA is that there is poor , inefficient communication and co-ordination between internal and external stakeholders.

Impacts : Do we really understand the importance?

When a company were to take a new bypass as a development proposal and the local landscape as the sensitive environmental resource, then an impact (the change arising from the development’s progression) could be the permanent loss of mature trees and hedgerows. An effect (the consequence of the impact), on the other hand, could be the opening of new views towards the new bypass or a change in the perception of local landscape character. The distinction between the two terms in this example is fairly clear, however, for other environmental topics such as noise, this distinction can be much less apparent.
Matters are not helped by the fact that some topic-specific guidance does not provide a means of identifying and reporting significant environmental effects, or rather they require the significance of impacts to be established. Difficulties can arise where technical specialists follow their own best-practice guidance and duly provide what they consider to be EIA compliant inputs to the project environmental coordinator. Faced with a package of reports by different authors – each reporting impacts and effects in their own particular way – the coordinator often feels obliged to rework assessments and terminology in an effort to try and establish a modicum of consistency across the EIA. While it is never considered best-practice to attempt to change assessments that have relied on and followed best-practice guidance, the overarching requirement to report significant environmental effects under the EIA Directive remains. The identification and reporting of significant environmental impacts in an environmental statement could, therefore, be viewed as falling short of the requirements of the EIA Directive. EIA, by its very name, implies we should be assessing impacts yet the content of the EIA Directive suggests otherwise. Genuine challenges therefore exist in terms of consistently defining what constitutes an “impact” and what constitutes an “effect” across a series of individual assessments. When taking an overview of all the published guidance and standards that EIA practitioners currently operate under, the inconsistencies become clear and reveal a genuine problem in current EIA practice. The accurate reporting of significant environmental effects within a multidisciplinary process can only really be achieved when there is a robust understanding of the two terms, and when topic-specific methodologies provide a means of consistently identifying and predicting them.