1. Lecture 3: Environmental impact Assessment (EIA)
BIO410- Ecology and Environmental Engineering
FALL 2016
By Jasmin Šutković
24h Oct. 2016
Lecture 3: Environmental impact Assessment (EIA)

2. Outline Environmental impact Use of Risk analysis
Socioeconomic impact assessment
Conclusion
Problem case studies

3. What is EIA?
An examination of the likely impacts of development proposals on the environment prior to the beginning of any activity.

4. What is EIA ?
EIA’s are meant to inform and guide the decisions made regarding a project.
They are designed to quantify (measure) what the environment is like now and project how it would be affected by the project.
These projects are usually quite large and include considerable government involvement. Typical projects requiring EIA’s:
dams
roads
ports
airports
power plants
subdivisions (large-scale suburban housing developments)

5. Short History
1969 in USA the goverment passed the national environmental policy (NEPA).
Importants: This law gave the environment the same status as economic properties have!
Within 20 years many countries implemented similar policies :
Canada
Columbia- 1974 UK
Netherlands

6. EU regulation on EIA
Environmental assessment can be undertaken for individual projects, such as a dam, motorway, airport or factory, on the basis of Directive 2011/92/EU (known as 'Environmental Impact Assessment' – EIA Directive) or for public plans or programmes on the basis of Directive 2001/42/EC (known as 'Strategic Environmental Assessment' – SEA Directive)

7. Turkey: EIA status

8. BiH status on EIA
No legislation on environmental impact assessment exists at the state level.!!!!
In Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the EIA is transposed through the Law on Environmental Protection and delegated legislation. The existing legal framework still has certain flaws (related mainly to public participation). The new Law on Environmental Protection has not yet been adopted by parliament. In Republika Srpska, the Law on Environmental Protection, adopted in 2012 and amended in September 2015, governs environmental impact assessment. Several rulebooks necessary for the implementation of the law exist.

9. Example in BiH

10. GOALS
To ensure that eventual effects on the environment are considered before the authorities in charge make a decision about the approval or initiation of activities that could cause perceptible effects on the environment.
To encourage implementation of relevant procedures, in accordance with national legislation and the decision-making process.
To encourage the creation of procedures for information exchange, reporting and consultation amongst countries in cases when the proposed activities may have cross-border environmental effects in those countries.

11. EIA's include several stages :
Baseline study
Scoping
Mitigation
Non-technical summary

12. Baseline study Determines the current state of the site’s environment
measure the biotic and abiotic factors before the site is disturbed (some examples are listed below)
microclimate
water, soil, &/or air quality
stream flow
diversity
species richness
species evenness
endangered species
impacts on human populations
health
economics

13. Scoping Identifies and assesses the possible impacts
What will definitely change?
How will it change?
How much will it change?
How will that change affect:
diversity of flora and fauna
people living in or near the area
physical (abiotic) components of the nearby ecosystem

14. Mitigation Limiting the impacts to acceptable levels
What constitutes “acceptable” levels? Who determines those levels?
What must be done to limit those impacts?
Who is responsible for those actions?
Who is responsible for monitoring the changes?
What are the consequences for exceeding the acceptable levels of change?

15. Non-technical summary
Theoretically designed to explain the science in everyday language so that an average citizen can understand the issues around the project.

16. FONSI, EA and EIS
The EIA results in issuance of one of three documents:
FONSI - Finding of No Significant Impact
EA- Environmental Assessment :
A detailed assessment of potential environmental impact resulting in one of two conclusions: either the EA must be expanded to a full-scale environmental impact statement or a FONSI results from the EA.
EIS- Environmental Impact Statement:
Takes in consideretaion in detail the potential environmental impacts of a proposed action and alternative actions.

17. EA- Environmental Assessment
The process of calculating projected effects that a proposed action or construction project will have on environmental quality

18. Environmental assessment - Checklists
Checklists are lists of potential environmental impacts, both primary and secondary.
Primary effects occur as a direct result of the proposed project, such as the effect of a dam on aquatic life.
Secondary effects occur as an indirect result of the action.
For example, an interchange for a highway may not directly affect wildlife, but indirectly it will draw such establishments as service stations and quick food stores, thus changing land use patterns.
The checklist for a highway project could be divided into three phases: planning, construction, and operation

19. Checklists
The construction phase checklist will include displacement of people, noise, soil erosion, air and water pollution, and energy use.
Finally, the operation phase will list direct impacts owing to noise, water pollution resulting from runoff, energy use, etc., and indirect impacts owing to regional development, housing, lifestyle, and economic development.

20. The checklist technique thus lists all of the important factors; then the magnitude and importance of the impacts are estimated.
Estimated importance of impact may be quantified by establishing an arbitrary scale, such as:
0 = no impact
1 = minimal impact
2 = small impact
3 = moderate impact
4 = significant impact
5 = severe impact

21. Concerns with using checklist
In the checklist technique most variables must be subjectively valued.
It difficult to predict further conditions such as land-use pattern changes or changes in lifestyle.
Even with these drawbacks, however, this method is often used by engineers because of its simplicity.
Impact assessments of controversial projects often do not use the checklist technique because the numerical ranking implies a subjective judgment by the environmental assessment team.
Subejctive: based on persobal opinion, mainlz upon personal expiriance
Objective; fact based, measurable and observable

22. EXAMPLE.2.1 Landfield near floodplain
A landfill is to be placed in the floodplain of a river.
Estimate the impact by using the checklist technique. First the items to be impacted are listed; then a quantitative judgment concerning both importance and magnitude of the impact is made
This total of 34 may then be compared with totals calculated for alternative courses of action. Note that jobs are a positive impact, as distinct from the negative environmental impacts of the other variables, and is arbitrarily assigned a negative value, so that its impact is subtracted from the other impacts

23. EXAMPLE 2.2 Lignite (brown) coal
Lignite (brown) coal is to be surface-mined in the Appalachian Mountains.
Construct an interaction matrix for the water resources (environmental characteristics) vs resource extraction (proposed actions).

24. Environmental quality index (EQI).
Numerical ratings may be assigned to these items (parameters).
One procedure is to fist estimate the ideal or natural levels of environmental quality and take a ratio of the expected condition to the ideal.
For example, if the ideal dissolved oxygen in the stream is 9mg/l, and the effect of the proposed action is to lower the dissolved oxygen to 3 mg/l, the ratio would be 0.33.
This is usualy called the environmental quality index (EQI)

25. Items that do not have a quantitative scale (like old buildings), a scale based on qualitative considerations may be generated by an expert in the particular area.
For example, impact on a historic building might be measured by the cost of recovering from certain amounts of damage.
The EQI values are then tabulated for each parameter.
Next, weights may be attached to the items, usually by distributing manz parameter importance units (PIU) among the items.

26. Environmental impact unit (EIU)
The product of EQI and PIU, called the environmental impact unit (EIU), is thus the magnitude of the impact multiplied by the importance:

27. EXAMPLE: 2.3
Evaluate the effect of a proposed lignite strip mine on a local stream. Use 10 PIU and linear functions for EQI.
The first step is to list the areas of potential environmental impact. These may be:
appearance of water
suspended solids
odor and floating materials
aquatic life
dissolved oxygen.

28. EXAMPLE 2.3- cont
Next, we need to assign EQIs to the factors. Assuming a linear relationship, we can calculate them as in Table 2-3.

29. USE OF RISK ANALYSIS IN ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT
The rationale for including risk analysis in environmental impact assessment is threefold:
Risk analysis provides a method for comparing low-probability, high consequence impacts with high probability, low-consequence impacts
Risk analysis allows assessment of future uncertain impacts, and incorporates uncertainty into the assessment.
The United States and international agencies concerned with regulating environmental impact are adopting risk-based standards in place of consequence-based standards.

30. SOCIOECONOMIC IMPACT ASSESSMENT
Public health issues – discussed earlier , are to be considered
Environmental degradation- another concern to be considered while assessing the impact of projects
Socioeconomic considerations such as population increases, need for public services like schools are also included under NEPA considerations
Frequently ,public acceptability is also a necessary input to an evaluation process. Although an alternative may protect public health and minimize environmental degradation, it may not be generally acceptable.

31. Economic and Social impact
Economics includes the costs of an alternative, including the state, regional, local, and private components; the resulting impacts on user charges and prices; and the ability to finance capital expenditures...etc.
Social concerns include public preferences in siting or placing (local landfills in wealthy neighborhoods) and public rejection of a particular disposal method (solid waste )

32. Components of Economic impact assesment
Financing
Is the project afordable, meaning if the manucipality or other entitiy have the required budget for it?
Bank loan for a greater good, ot not?
Increases in User Charges
Analysis of projected increases in user charges. What change a new project may bring to the society in terms of expenses ? For examples bills for water per houshold? How can we measure these impacts ?

33. Sociological Impacts
Large changes in the population of a community, such as influxes of temporary construction workers or establishment of a military base with immigration of the associated personnel and their families, may have a number of impacts, both positive and adverse.
New service jobs may well be created, particularly in small communities, but there may also be increases in the crime rate, the need for police officers on the street, the need for fire protection, etc.
Study of such “boom town” phenomena has led to the inclusion of these assessments in any environmental assessment.

34. Ethical Considerations
A properly done environmental impact assessment is independent of any ethical system and is value free.
However, ethical questions can arise in formulating a record of decision based on an environmental assessment.
Some of these questions are:

35. Ethical questions after risk assessment :
Is it ethical to eliminate jobs in an area in order to protect the environment for a future generation?
Conversely, is it ethical to use up a resource so that future generations do not have it at all?
Given limited financial resources, is it ethical to spend millions mitigating a high-consequence impact that is extremely unlikely to occur (a low-probability, high-consequence event)?
Is it ethical to destroy a watershed by providing logging jobs for 50 years?
Conversely, is it ethical to close down a lumber mill, eliminating jobs for an entire small community, in order to save an old-growth forest?

36. CONCLUSION
Engineers are required to develop, analyze, and compare a range of solutions to any given environmental pollution problem.
This range of alternatives must be viewed in terms of their respective environmental impacts and economic assessments.
Can individuals really measure, in the strict “scientific” sense, degradation of the environment?
For example, can we place a value on an unspoiled wilderness area? Unfortunately, qualitative judgments are required to assess many impacts of any project.

38. Announcement
NEXT WEEK: 31th October QUIZZ 1