Enviromental Impact Assessment

Introduction

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is assessment of impacts on the environment due to proposed activity and finding ways to mitigate the environmental impacts.

These impacts are assessed based on many components such as environmental, socio-economic, cultural and human-health aspects.

EIA is standardly defined as the study of impact on environment of proposed action like policy, plan or project. It is a process of anticipating or establishing the changes in the physical, ecological and socio-economic components of the environment before, during and after an impending developmental project so that undesirable effects, if any can be mitigated.

Any developmental activity will surely have negative impacts on the environment and it’s components. We cannot prevent the negative impacts but we can minimize the negative impacts using Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environmental Management Plan (EMP)

Therefore a thorough assessment of the likely impacts of proposed projects such as construction of hydroelectric dams, Highways, thermal power stations, refineries and factories should be considered however small it may be and should be brought to the notice of policy makers and necessary management plans should be made.

Birth and evolution of EIA

The idea of possible impact assessment was started by US Army Corp of Engineers in 1870.From which EIA was later evolved with action forcing provision of US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969.

That is NEPA of 1969 of USA is legislative basis of EIA. The legislation made it mandatory to assess all the environmental consequences of all activities by federal agencies.

California was the first of the American states to introduce an effective National Environment...

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... of Rapid EIA or Comprehensive EIA after which they also check for whether a project requires clearance as per statutory notification at state level or national level.

And suppose it is a Rapid EIA- one season data is required (apart from monsoon) and if it is comprehensive- three season data is taken.

Screening criteria is based on

1) Scale of investment

2) Type of development and

3) Location of development.

If screening does not clear a project Preliminary Assessment is done for that project.

Preliminary Assessment requires sufficient research, huge amount of data, experts advice on impacts of project, extent of impacts and briefly evaluate the importance to decision makers.

There are lots of advantages in preliminary assessment like it helps in assisting project planning, early indication of any serious problem and this step clears the projects need of full EIA.