Environmental assessment is a phrase which has been increasingly heard in the development industry in the past three years, but remains one which is only partially understood by many people. The concept of environmental impact assessment, of establishing by a thorough study the likely environmental effects of a development, is not new. It has been standard practice in the USA, for example, for a number of years.
Several European nations such as Holland and France have fairly well-established environmental impact assessment procedures, and even here in the UK such studies have been carried out voluntarily in the past for major development proposals, such as London’s proposed third airport at Stansted (1980) and a large-scale opencast metal mine at Hemerdon, Devon (1982), but it is only since 1988 that environmental assessment (EA) as it is officially termed in the UK has been required by statute.
The introduction to the UK of mandatory EA for some development projects is the result of European Community (EC) Directive 85/337 which, after a tortuous passage through the legislature taking some 20 drafts and 10 years, has finally resulted in some form of EA being applied in every member state. The relevant statute in the UK is the Town and Country Planning (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations which came into force on July 15 1988.
The fundamental concept underlying EA is that the best means of safeguarding the environment in a world where a vast range of development pressures threaten to upset both the natural order and human settlements is to prevent the creation of pollution or nuisance at source rather than subsequently to try to counteract their effects. The principles of EA which were laid down in the EC directive and are common to the legislation of all member states therefore are:
- that where a development is likely to have significant environmental effects development consent should be considered only after an EA has been carried out;
- that the responsibility for providing the necessary information and producing the EA is the prime responsibility of the developer;
- that the scope of the EA should cover the direct and indirect effects of the development on:
(a) human beings, flora and fauna;
(b) soil, water, air, climate and landscape;
(c) the interaction between the foregoing;
(d) material assets and cultural heritage.
Clearly the intention is to produce an all-embracing definition of environment. The directive also allowed member states to apply a more rigorous regime than the model set out by the EC.
Which forms of development require an EA
The Town and Country Planning (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations 1988 specify the types of development where an EA should be submitted. Schedule I of the regulations includes those types of development for which an EA must be submitted. These include most crude oil refineries, thermal power stations, radioactive waste stores, asbestos-processing plants, chemical installations, major roads, railway lines and airports, large port facilities and treatment or disposal sites for dangerous or toxic wastes. Schedule II contains a longer list of those types of development which may require an EA.
Discretion may be exercised by both the developer and the planning authority, the decision as to whether an EA is needed resting on issues such as the scale of the development, its location in relation to sensitive or designated areas and the range or size of its anticipated impacts.
Schedule II is divided into sections relating to agriculture, the extractive industries, the energy industries, processing of metals, manufacture of glass, chemicals, rubber, textiles, the food industry, infrastructure projects and a miscellaneous “other projects”. In terms of the frequency of developments which may necessitate preparation of an EA, these last two are potentially significant since they include industrial estate development projects, urban development projects, yacht marinas, holiday villages and hotel complexes. Evidence to date, however, suggests that the majority of EAs have been concerned with waste-disposal sites and the extractive industry.
The decision as to whether a project falling into Schedule II requires an EA can be a difficult issue. The costs of preparing an EA in terms of time and money can be significant, as can the input required from the local authority which has to assess the EA. The regulations state that a developer can decide that a project merits an EA but in any case he can apply to the relevant local authority (LA) for a ruling as to whether an EA is required. In cases where the LA itself decides that an EA is necessary and the developer disagrees then representations may be made to the relevant Secretary of State who will normally give a ruling within three weeks.
These procedures are explained in “the blue book”, Environmental Assessment: A Guide to Procedures, which was produced by the Government in 1989 to clarify some of the trickier issues concerned with EA. It is a fund of useful information, particularly concerning “threshold levels” for testing the significance of Schedule II projects to determine whether an EA is required.
While such advice is clearly designed to help both the developer and planner, it tends inevitably to be crude and over-simplistic in many cases. For example pig-rearing installations which fall under Schedule II, “will not generally require an EA: however, those designed to house more than 400 sows or 5,000 fattening pigs may require an EA”. Arbitrary thresholds of this nature, which are common in the guide, are difficult to justify in practice; the smell, pollution and noise of 5,000 fattening pigs being practically indistinguishable from 5,001, and yet such advice has an awkward tendency to be taken literally in arguments over determination of EA requirements.
It should also be noted that EAs may be required for development projects which fall outside the bounds of normal planning control, for example trunk road developments, afforestation and marine fish farming. In cases where planning permission from the LA is required, however, the EA is supplementary to the normal planning application. It should not be seen as an alternative method of application.
What does an EA look like?
At first glance most EAs are impressive-looking documents. They have an increasing tendency to be weighty and glossy. Multi-volume EAs are not unknown. None of this is surprising, since the procedures are designed to deal with a very large amount of information which must be fully reported.
From the developer’s point of view they represent a considerable investment which is intended to serve the purpose of obtaining the desired consents. As a result they are intentionally designed to impress their readers. Close scrutiny is needed, however to assess the true worth of such documents. Because of the broad nature of the subject-matter — power stations, mines, poultry farms, airports etc — it is not possible to lay down hard-and-fast criteria relating to the detailed content. However, it is possible to be more specific about the methodology of the study and the general format of the report.
(1) Methodology
It is generally accepted that the purpose of an EA is to identify and quantify those aspects of the environment which are likely to suffer significant effects from the implementation of a development proposal and to suggest mitigation techniques which could be employed to counter these effects. In order to achieve these ends, regardless of the nature of the development, certain basic techniques are required.
First, in order to facilitate measurement of change, the environmental situation prior to the implementation of the development must be established by a “base-line study”. This should measure factors such as pollution levels present in air and water, vegetation type and cover, traffic flows, ambient noise levels and local climatic features. This data then provides a base line against which potential future change can be measured.
Second, a “scoping” exercise is needed. Essentially, scoping is concerned with identifying those areas where significant change is expected so that the study team can focus on a small number of critical factors rather than dilute their effects by giving the same weight to factors of major and minor significance. There is clearly a role for expert advice, a wide range of consultation with interested parties such as environmental pressure groups and statutory organisations and the relevant local authority at this stage.
Third, quantification of effects, where possible, is favoured since numerical measures of input and significance all help to contribute to a more objective than subjective assessment of the development’s effects. There are a number of text books which discuss the range of techniques which have been generated to assist in the quantification process. Variations on the simple matrix are probably the most common, with impacts set against development types with a significance score entered in the appropriate cell.
(2) Report format
The sheer volume of information which an EA can contain demands that a logical and clear format is required to render it comprehensible. The “blue book” guide lays down minimum requirements, such as:
(a) a description of the proposed development;
(b) necessary data to identify the main environmental effects;
(c) a description of the likely effects;
(d) a description of mitigation measures;
(e) a non-technical summary of the above.
These requirements should be treated as a minimum. Any EA which does not contain all of these is worthless, and most would be expected to contain much more. Research at the Environmental Impact Assessment Centre at Manchester University has produced a much more extensive checklist of contents for an acceptable EA. This methodology is recommended, particularly for planners who need to carry out a qualitative assessment of an EA as part of the local authority’s decision-making function.
The technical details of particular topics examined in an EA – noise or water pollution measurement, for example — are clearly the preserve of the specialist. Both a developer commissioning an EA from consultants, and the LA assessing the quality of an EA, would be expected to avail themselves of specialist expertise for such matters, which clearly adds to the cost of both processes; but the basic business of setting up and managing a study and giving a preliminary assessment of its worth could be carried out by the average surveyor or planner, given a modicum of training.
Experience to date
Most commentators are agreed that the UK government was reluctant to bow to EC pressure for EA. From the design of the legislation and from comments at the time of implementation it is clear that only a few dozen EAs every year were anticipated. The existing planning system was felt to be a sufficient regulatory mechanism without the addition of an EA and many people felt that a well-formed planning application was the equivalent of EA anyway. Three years’ experience of EA has demonstrated the fallacy of these arguments. Rather than a few dozen we have seen a few hundred EAs produced each year since 1988. Perhaps, inevitably, their quality has been variable. A recent DOE report criticised this very aspect.
There can be little doubt, though, that a competently produced EA usually goes far beyond the equivalent planning application in documenting in detail the significance of environmental effects and in setting out mitigation measures. Only time and experience in EA preparation will demonstrate this difference adequately and we are still well down on the learning curve in terms of EA production.
Criticisms abound, both of EA quality, of LA planners’ abilities to assess these competently and, not least, of the EA system itself in the way in which it has been married to the UK planning system. In particular, the EA arrangements for developments which do not fall under local authority control, such as motorways, rail routes, power stations, forestry schemes and marine fish farms, as well as developments resulting from private Acts of Parliament such as the Channel Tunnel sit uneasily in comparison with the EA legislation adapted in other European states. Greater co-operation in Europe clearly demands more uniformity in legislative controls and similar environmental standards. EA is one more piece in this great European jigsaw which provides great opportunities and also demands the assimilation of specialist skills on the part of the surveyor and planner.
References
Department of the Environment — Town and Country Planning (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations 1988, HMSO
Department of the Environment — Environmental Assessment: A Guide to Procedures, 1989, HMSO Wathern P (ed), Environmental Impact Assessment, 1988, Unwin Hyman
University of Manchester, Environmental Impact Assessment Centre — occasional papers on environmental impact assessment (available on request).
