CIV440H1S - Environmental Impact and Risk Assessment

Dr. Mohammad Manshouri m.manshouri@utoronto.ca

Description:
Core Course in the Environmental Engineering Minor. The process and techniques for assessing and managing the impacts on and risks to humans and the ecosystem associated with engineered facilities, processes and products, both biophysical and social impacts are addressed.
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Topics include:
Environmental assessment processes; Environmental legislation; Techniques for assessing impacts; Engineering risk analysis; Health risk assessment; Risk management and communication; Social impact assessment; Cumulative impacts; Environmental management systems; The process of considering alternative methods for preventing and controlling impacts; Stakeholder involvement and public participation; and .
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 Examples are drawn from various engineering activities and facilities such as energy production, chemical production, treatment plants, highways and landfills.

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Environmental Impact Assessment

An environmental impact assessment is an assessment of the possible positive or negative impact that a proposed project may have on the environment, together consisting of the environmental, social and economic aspects.

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 The purpose of the assessment is to ensure that decision makers consider the ensuing environmental impacts when deciding whether to proceed with a project.

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 The International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) defines an environmental impact assessment as The process of identifying, predicting, evaluating and mitigating the biophysical, social, and other relevant effects of development proposals prior to major decisions being taken and commitments made."
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 EIAs are unique as they do not require adherence to a predetermined environmental outcome, but rather they require decision-makers to account for environmental values in their decisions and to justify those decisions considering detailed environmental studies and public comments on the potential environmental impacts of the proposal.
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 EIAs began to be used in the 1960s as part of a rational decision making process.
It involved a technical evaluation that would lead to objective decision making.

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 EIAs have often been criticized for having too narrow spatial and temporal scope.
At present no procedure has been specified for determining a system boundary for the assessment. The system boundary refers to the spatial and temporal boundary of the proposals effects.
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 This boundary is determined by the applicant and the lead assessor, but in practice, almost all EIAs address the direct, on-site effects alone. However, as well as direct effects, developments cause a multitude of indirect effects through consumption of goods and services, production of building materials and machinery, additional land use for activities of various manufacturing and industrial services, mining of resources etc.
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 The indirect effects of developments are often an order of magnitude higher than the direct effects assessed by EIA. Large proposals such as airports or ship yards cause wide ranging national as well as international environmental effects, which should be taken into consideration during the decision-making process.
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 Broadening the scope of EIA can also benefit threatened species conservation.

Instead of concentrating on the direct effects of a proposed project on its local environment, some EIAs used a landscape approach which focused on much broader relationships between the entire population of a species in question.
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 As a result, an alternative that would cause least amount of negative effects to the population of that species as a whole, rather than the local subpopulation, can be identified and recommended by EIA.

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 At the end of the project, an EIA should be followed by an audit. An EIA audit evaluates the performance of an EIA by comparing actual impacts to those that were predicted. The main objective of these audits is to make future EIAs more valid and effective.
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The two main considerations are:

Scientific - to check the accuracy of predictions and explain errors.

Management - to assess the success of mitigation in reducing impacts.

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 The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) is the legal basis for the federal Environmental Assessment (EA) process.

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Reading List
Petts, J. (ed), Handbook of Environmental Impact Assessment Vol. 1 & 2, Blackwell, OxfordISBN 0-632-04772-0 Environmental Impact Assessment Review (1980), Elsevier Glasson, J; Therivel, R; Chadwick A, Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment, (2005) Routledge, London Carroll, B. and Turpin T. Environmental impact assessment handbook, second edition (2009) Thomas Telford Ltd, ISBN 978-07277-3509-6 Hanna, k; Environmental Impact Assessment: Practice and Participation" (2009) Second edition, Oxford Impact Assessment: Unintended Consequences of Green Technologies A University of California, Berkeley overview of unintended impacts of green energy technologies and practices

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Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is a step in a risk management procedure.
Risk assessment is the determination of quantitative or qualitative value of risk related to a concrete situation and a recognized threat (also called hazard).

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 Quantitative risk assessment requires calculations of two components of risk, the magnitude of the potential loss, and the probability that the loss will occur.

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 In all types of engineering of complex systems, sophisticated risk assessments are often made within Safety engineering and Reliability engineering when it concerns threats to life, environment or machine functioning.

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 The nuclear, aerospace, oil, rail and military industries have a long history of dealing with risk assessment. Also, medical, hospital, and food industries, control risks and perform risk assessments on a continual basis.

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 Methods for assessment of risk may differ between industries and whether it pertains to general financial decisions or environmental, ecological, or public health risk assessment.

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 So Risk assessment is a critical element of environmental management.

In this course we begin by examining the definition of risk in the context of environmental management.

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 We look at ways to assess environmental risk in terms of effects on human health and safety; difficulties inherent to such analyses (e.g., cumulative and synergistic effects, uncertainty) are addressed.

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 In addition to direct human impacts, environmental risk also implies threats to nonhuman species and entire ecosystems (the effects of which may in turn indirectly threaten humans).

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 Risk assessment is just the beginning of the story when it comes to the role of risk in environmental management. We will consider different approaches to risk management (prevention, mitigation, compensation) as well as the regulatory and legislative context to risk assessment and management.
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 Risk assessment is a very broad and deep subject; each topic covered in this course could easily be the subject of a full course of its own.

As such, this should be considered a course introducing students to the major elements of risk assessment.

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 Note also that we will not be going very deep into the technical aspects of risk assessment.
Students with professional experience in this area are encouraged to share their experience with the class when it is relevant to the topics being covered.

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Explanation:
Risk assessment consists of an objective evaluation of risk in which assumptions and uncertainties are clearly considered and presented. Part of the difficulty in risk management is that measurement of both of the quantities in which risk assessment is concerned - potential loss and probability of occurrence - can be very difficult to measure.
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 The chance of error in measuring these two concepts is large.

Risk with a large potential loss and a low probability of occurring is often treated differently from one with a low potential loss and a high likelihood of occurring.

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 In theory, both are of nearly equal priority, but in practice it can be very difficult to manage when faced with the scarcity of resources, especially time, in which to conduct the risk management process.

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Risk assessment in public health

In the context of public health, risk assessment is the process of quantifying the probability of a harmful effect to individuals or populations from certain human activities.

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 In most countries the use of specific chemicals or the operations of specific facilities (e.g. power plants, manufacturing plants) is not allowed unless it can be shown that they do not increase the risk of death or illness above a specific threshold.

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 For example, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates food safety through risk assessment. The FDA required in 1973 that cancer-causing compounds must not be present in meat at concentrations that would cause a cancer risk greater than 1 in a million lifetimes.

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 The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides basic information about environmental risk assessments for the public via its risk assessment portal.

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 All required readings will be available as journal articles through the University of Toronto libraries or will be provided throughout the course.

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 Reading List
Burger, J. (2000). Consumption advisories and compliance: The fishing public and the deamplification of risk. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 43(4): 471-488. CEAA (1999). Cumulative Affects Assessment Practitioners Guide. Available online at Corburn, J. (2002). Environmental justice, local knowledge, and risk: The discourse of a community-based cumulative exposure assessment. Environmental Management 29(4): 451-466. Finucane, M.L., Slovic, P., Mertz, C.K., Flynn, J. & Satterfield, T.A. (2000). Gender, race, and perceived risk: the white male effect. Health, Risk & Society 2(2): 159-172. Fiorino, D.J. (1989). Environmental risk and democratic process: A critical review. Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 14(2): 501547.

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 Fumento, M. (1993, June). How to understand scientific studies and epidemiology. Consumers Research Magazine. Available online at http://www.fumento.com/tenet.html Fumento, M. (1996). Delaney clause is nostalgia we cant afford. Available online at http://www.fumento.com/delaney.html Fumento, M. (2004). Overspending on AIDS killing us. Available online at http://www.fumento.com/disease/aidsenough2004.html Mitchell, B. (2004). Introduction: Policy context, issues, and challenges. In Mitchell, B. (ed.), Resource and environmental management in Canada: Addressing conflict and uncertainty (3rd ed.). Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. (pp. 1-18). Rowe, W.D. (1977). An anatomy of risk. New York: John Wiley & Sons. (selected pages) Segal, M, (1990, June). Is it worth the worry? Determining risk. FDA Consumer. Available online at http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/CONSUMER/CON00054.html Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of risk. Science 236(17 April): 280-285. Whyte, Anne V. & Burton, I. (eds.) (1980). Environmental risk assessment. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. (selected pages)

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Grading:
Paper: Discussion of Published Research Paper 10% Mid-term Exam - Closed Book 40% Final Exam - Closed Book 50% ----------------------------------------------------------------Total 100%

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SOURCES OF INFORMATION
There are many books and journals that have information on environmental impact assessment and risk assessment that may be useful to you in this course.

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 Below are listed only some that should be available in the University library system.
You can get most of the journals electronically through the U of T Catalogue on the Web (see URL below).

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General Texts:
Andre, P., C.E. Delisle and J-P Reveret, Environmental Assessment for Sustainable Development, Presses Internationales Polytechnique, Montreal, 2004.
Burdge, R.J., A Conceptual Approach to Social Impact Assessment, revised edition, Social Ecology Press, Middleton, Wisconsin, 1998. Burdge, R.J. et al., The Concepts, Process and Methods of Social Impact Assessment, Social Ecology Press, Middleton, Wisconsin, 2004.

Center for Chemical Process Safety, Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures, second edition, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1992.
Canter, L.W., Environmental Impact Assessment, second edition, McGrawHill, New York, 1996.
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 Covello, V.T. and M.W. Merkhofer, Risk Assessment Methods, Approaches for Assessing Health and Environmental Risks, Plenum Press, New York, 1993. Graedel, T.E., Streamlined Life-Cycle Assessment, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1998. Health Canada, The Health and Environment Handbook for Health Professionals, Ottawa, 1998.

Kent, C., Basics of Toxicology, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1998.
Louvar, J.F. and B.D. Louvar, Health and Environmental Risk Analysis: Fundamentals with Applications, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1998.

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Morris, P. and R. Therivel, eds., Methods of Environmental Impact Assessment, UBC Press, Vancouver, 1995. Munier, N., Multicriteria Environmental Assessment: A Practical Guide, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 2004.
Ortolano, L., Environmental Regulation and Impact Assessment, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1997. Taylor, C. N., C.H. Bryan and C.G. Goodrich, Social Assessment: Theory, Process and Techniques, third edition, Social Ecology Press, Middleton, Wisconsin, 2004.

Treweek, J. Ecological Impact Assessment, Blackwell Science Ltd., Oxford, 1999.

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Journals General Journals:

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Environmental Impact Assessment Review Environmental Modeling and Assessment Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management Journal of Environmental Management Journal of Environmental Planning and Management Risk Analysis Risk: Health, Safety and Environment
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Journals on Specific Technical Topics:

The following are only a few of the many technical journals that have papers related to environmental impact and risk assessment. Annual Review of Energy and Environment

Energy Conversion and Management Environmental Engineering and Policy Environmental Management Environmental Management and Health Environmental Science and Technology Human and Ecological Risk Assessment International Journal of Energy Research Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association Journal of Environmental Engineering (American Society of Civil Engineers) Journal of Hazardous Materials
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 All of these journals are available electronically through the U of T Library at:
http://main.library.utoronto.ca/eir/resources.cfm?T=J

Once you link to the journal, you should be able to get full copies of the papers in the journal from at least one of the links. (Note that some links will only give you access to the paper abstracts.)
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Information on Government Laws and Regulations and EA Activities

General Texts:
Phyper, J-D. and B. Ibbotson, The Handbook of Environmental Compliance in Ontario, Third Edition, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Toronto, 2003. Ibbotson, B. and J-D Phyper, eds., Environmental Management in Canada, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Ltd., Toronto, 1996.

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 Access to Laws and Regulations: To get up-to-date copies of Federal and Ontario laws and regulations, you can use the following web sites.

Federal:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=48D356C1-1

Ontario: Items can be downloaded and printed

http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/ Press: English Press: Statutes and associated regulations
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Information about Environmental Assessments under the Federal and Ontario EA Acts can be found on government web sites:
Federal Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency: http://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/default.asp?Lang=En&n=D75FB358-1 Ontario Ministry of Environment: http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/en/eaab/index.php

Home pages for government web sites that may be of interest are: Environment Canada: http://www.ec.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=FD9B0E51-1
Canadian Council of Minister of the Environment (CCME): http://ccme.ca

Ontario Ministry of Environment: http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/en/index.php

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Organizations
There are also the following organizations for people interested in environmental impact assessment. Some interesting and useful publications are available for free through these web sites.
International Association for Impact Assessment: http://www.iaia.org Ontario Association for Impact Assessment: http://www.oaia.on.ca International Association for Public Participation: http://www.iap2.org/
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