Preliminary Assessment: Carried out in the early stages of planning
Detailed Assessment: Carried out during project planning until the project plan is completed and are reported formally as an Environmental Statement.
There are five stages in the Environmental Assessment process.
1) SCOPING
2) SCREENING
3) ALTERNATIVES
4) MITIGATING MEASURES, DEALING WITH UNCERTAINTY
5) ENVIRONMENTAL STATEMENTS
Scoping is used to identify the key issues of concern at an early stage in the planning process. Scoping should be carried out at an early stage in order to aid site selection and identify any possible alternatives. The scoping process should involve all interested parties such as the proponent and planning or environmental agencies and members of the public. The results of scoping will form determine the scope, depth and terms of reference to be addressed within the Environmental Statement.
Why carry out Scoping?
To identify the key issues and concerns of the interested parties.
* Who is concerned?
* What are their concerns?
* Why are they concerned?
* What is the threshold of concern where change becomes unacceptable?
When ineffective scoping occurs delays are caused by additional time being required to assess unidentified impacts.
Once the site for development has been selected the scoping angle changes. There will be a decrease in the number of issues and an increase in attention to detail .
This is used to decide whether an Environmental Assessment is required. There are two scenarios.
Scenario 1 - Environmental Assessments are required in every case. Projects range from "a coastline development" to "an extension of the Prospect power station".
Scenario 2 - Environmental Assessments are required if the project is likely to give rise to significant environmental effects by virtue of factors of their nature, size or location. The list of Scenario 2 projects is greater than that of scenario 1. It covers projects from "a Nevis village re-creation" to "stones extraction" for commercial sales.
Screening is a comprehensive and clear method of decision making. It is practical, quick and easy to use.
Alternatives
This includes both alternative sites and alternative techniques. This search must be genuine, well documented and carried out before a choice has been made. It is usually the case that alternative sites are available as well as practical although this is not always the case. Some projects are site specific such as mining. The extraction can only occur were the mineral is sited. In such cases an EIS is pointless although other measures such as scale, mitigating measures and traffic management are addressed.
This reviews the action taken to prevent, avoid or minimise the actual or potential adverse effects of a project. The measure could include the abandoning or modifying of a proposal. This would include the various pollution abatement techniques that would be required to reduce emissions to acceptable limits.
Uncertainty
If the uncertainties are great, with the possibility of grave consequences and no mitigating measures then the development plan is rejected.
If there are uncertainties that might be reduced by further studies then the applicationis deferred until further studies are carried out.
Environmental Statements
The EIA is the process required to produce the Environmental Statement.
The EIS is a comprehensive document that reports the findings of the EIA. This is the final stage of the EIA process and is now often required (by law) before a new project can proceed.
A typical EIS can be broken down into three parts with different levels of detail:
Volume 1 - - a comprehensive and concise document drawing together all relevant
information regarding the project;
Non-Technical - a brief report of volume one in non-technical language so that it can
Summary (NTS) easily be understood by the public;
Volume 2 - - a volume which contains detailed assessment of the significant
environmental effects (This is not necessary if there are no
significant effects either before or after mitigation).
