Environmental Impact Assessment

Dr. Aneesh Mathew

Assistant Professor
Department of Civil Engineering
NIT Tiruchirappalli
 What is EIA???
EIA is an activity designed to identify and predict the impact of a
project on biogeophysicochemical environment and on human health so
as to recommend appropriate legislative measures, programs, and
operational procedures to minimize the impact.
An environmental impact assessment (EIA) is an assessment of the
possible positive or negative impact that a proposed project may have
on the environment, considering natural, Social and Economic aspects.
 EIA

 According to The International Association of Impact Assessment (IAIA)-

 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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 What is the significance of EIA?
Salient Features of EIA
• Identifies the possible positive and negative
impacts to the environment for "short-term" and
1 "long-term"

• Provides for a plan, which upon

implementation, will reduce or offset the negative
2 impacts of a project

• Provides a monitoring program to measure the

3 level of plan implementation
Reference components of EIA
 Legal and institutional framework of regulation, guidance
and procedure - establishes the requirements for the conduct
of EIA

 The steps and activities of the EIA process, as applied to

specific types of proposals

 The practice and performance of EIA, as evidenced by the

quality of EIA reports prepared, the decisions taken and the
environmental benefits delivered
EIA Procedure

Initial Environmental Examination

Full-Scale Environmental Impact

Assessment
 Impact assessment methods are classified into following analytical functions:
1. Scope
2. identification,
3. prediction, and
4. evaluation.
Figure: Generalized EIA process and flow chart
Impact Evaluation and Analysis
 Purpose of an EIA evaluation - comparatively evaluate alternative
courses of action (range: no-action to no-build)

 The major steps are:

 Identifying major activities
 Selecting environmental components
 Selecting types of impacts
 Assessing the possibilities and or probabilities of occurrences
 Determining the degree and time frame of impacts
 Designating impacts as positive, neutral or negative
 Determining trade-offs among activities and impacts
Classification of Environmental
Parameters
Some of the selected relevant environmental parameters are:

 Crop productivity
 Air quality
 Water quality of aquatic resources
 Nutrient status of water
 Drinking water quality
 Availability of agricultural land
Impact of land clearing activities in forest areas
 Physical
 Soil erosion
 Loss of soil fertility
 Loss of rain water infiltration
 Increase temperature
 Ecological
 Loss of forest resource
 Encroachment hazard
 Hazard from pesticide
 Human use values
 Impairment of D/S water quality
 Sedimentation & flooding hazard
 Quality of life values
 Forest tourism/aesthetic value
 Impairment of D/S water quality
 Disruption of forest population
 Insect vector disease hazard
 Activity

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A Case Study
Direct and indirect impact of typical construction project on mangrove
swamp and rise growing area
 Activity

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EIA – Stages of project involvement

 Planning

 Final design/construction start-up

 Project operations
Relationship between the various stages of a project development and the
timing for the tasks to be included in the EIA process
Environmental Base Map (EBM)
 An important requirement is preparation of EBM

 Shows the salient information as in planning, and final

design/construction start-up

 Includes the essential background information on the

environmental situation so that the reviewer can readily
interpret (& conclusion + recommendation)
 Industrial Development Project usually includes
 demography

 land use infrastructure

 receiving water

 ground water and soil conditions

 other industries and their waste streams
 institutions

 ecological resources

 areas of cultural importance

 archaeological importance
 Tourist importance
 The EBM should be portrayed as simply as possible and for this purpose a
schematic type drawing will usually be more appropriate than a map drawn
strictly to scale.
Classification of Environmental Parameters

Four Categories
 Natural physical resources
 Natural ecological resources
 Human/economic development resources and
 Quality-of-Iife values including aesthetic and cultural
values
Unit 1 (Second part)
 EIA Methodologies
 EIA analyst faced with a vast quantity of raw and usually unorganized
data

 Technique and method for the evaluation of impacts should have the
following qualities and characteristics

 It should be systematic in approach

 It should be able to organize a large mass of heterogeneous data

 It should be able to quantify the impacts

Continued ….
 It should be capable of summarizing the data

 Itshould be able to aggregate the data into sets with the least
loss of information because of the aggregations

 It should have a good predictive capability

 It should extract the salient features

 Itshould finally be able to display the raw data and the

derived information in a meaningful fashion
 Criteria for the Selection of EIA Methodology
(a) General
 Simplicity

 Manpower, time and budget constraints

 Flexibility

(b) Impact Identification Interpretation and Evaluation

 Comprehensiveness
 Specificity
 Isolation of project impact
 Timing and duration
 Criteria for the Selection of EIA Methodology
(c) Impact Measurement
 Commensurate units
 Explicit indicators
 Magnitude
 Objective criteria

(d) Impact Interpretation and Evaluation

 Significance
 Explicit criteria
 Portrayal of“ with" and "wit/wilt" situation
 Uncertainly
  Risk
 Depth. Of analysis
 Alterative comparison
 Public involvement

(e) Impact Communication

 Affected parties
 Setting description
 Summary format
 Key issues
 Compliance
E I A methods
 Ad-hoc methods

 Checklists methods

 Matrix methods

 Networks methods

 Overlays methods

 Environmental index using factor analysis

 Cost/benefit analysis

 Predictive or Simulation methods

Ad-hoc methods

 Indicate broad areas of possible impacts by listing

composite environmental parameters (for example flora
and fauna) likely to be affected by any development
Matrix methods

 Iinteractions between various activities and environmental

parameters considered

 Provide cause-effect relationships b/w project activities &

their impacts on environmentally important components

 Provides a graphic tool for displaying impacts to their

audience in a manner that can be easily comprehended
Network methods
 Capable of identifying direct and indirect impacts, higher order
effects and interactions between impacts
Network of pulp mill impacts
Overlay methods
 Involve preparation of a set of transparent maps, which represent
the spatial distribution of an environmental characteristic

 Limited to 10 maps - visibility

Cost/Benefit analysis
 Cost/benefit analysis provides the nature of expense and benefit
accruable from a project in monetary terms

 Enables easy understanding and aids decision-making

 Divided into three categories:

 Use of economics for "benefit-cost analysis" as an integral part of
project selection
 Use of economics in the assessment of activities suggested by the
EIA
 Economic assessment of the environmental impacts of the project
Tasks to be completed for economical
analysis of environmental impacts
 Determine the spatial and conceptual boundaries of the analysis
 Identify environmental impacts and their relationships to the project
 Quantify environmental impacts and organize them according to
importance
 Choose a technique for economic valuation
 Economic valuation (place monetary values) of environmental impacts
identified
 Set an appropriate time frame and perform the extended benefit cost
analysis
Environmental Medium Quality Index Method
 Steps include
 Factor identification
 Assignment of importance weights
 Establishment of scaling sections or other methods for factor
evaluation
 Termination and implementation of the appropriate aggregation
approach
 application of field verification

 Consists of delineating key factors that can be used as

 Indicators of environmental quality
 Susceptibility to pollution
 Pollution potential of the source type
e.g. Air Pollution Index
Cont … Calculation based on a single index
e.g. Water Quality Index