Studies for the Evaluation of the Environmental Impact in Industrial Processes

 

The selection of a suitable location is a decisive requirement for the safe operation of a repository mine and for the long-term safe containment of the waste after its decommissioning.

Essential criteria are the barrier properties of the rock, the hydrogeological conditions and the prognosis of future site developments.

The Preliminary Site Investigation is developed with available bibliographic information that replaces the EIA in those cases in which the activities do not involve intensive or extensive use of the land, such as aerial photography, surface geology, or in the case of low impact activities to develop in non-fragile ecosystems.

These preliminary studies are prepared by the person in charge to evaluate them with the environmental protection criteria, and which will serve as a basis for making decisions regarding the scope of the subsequent more detailed environmental analysis

In practice, this initial preliminary phase is part of the comprehensive environmental assessment plan of the project under study.

Partial studies are also developed that are based on analyzes to be carried out on those projects (both works projects and activity projects) that imply environmental impacts in their execution that would partially affect the environment.

Said partial environmental effects originated can be resolved (elimination or minimization) by adopting a series of simple and easily applied corrective measures, which will be collected in this partial study, and which is also part of the comprehensive environmental assessment plan of the project under study.

The preliminary investigation with a specifications is the first result in the framework of the EIA report. The survey should explain what presumably the most important questions to be answered in the EIA.

As part of the Detailed Site Investigation, the applicant discloses the environmental sectors which, in view of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), require additional investigations and/or assessments.

This makes it possible to prevent the EIA from neglecting environmental sectors significantly affected by the construction project and not placing in the foreground sectors affected by the project only slightly.

As a rule, preliminary investigations do not definitively establish all the environmental repercussions inherent in the construction project. For this reason, the applicant must submit a specification for the EIA to the environmental protection service.

In this case, the result of the preliminary investigation essentially corresponds to the guidelines established for the elaboration of the EIA.

However, if in the preliminary investigations the environmental repercussions of the project and the environmental protection measures can already be established and definitively illustrated, the results of the preliminary investigation count as EIA.

In the case of smaller projects, less problematic, we can limit ourselves to drawing up a preliminary investigation report.

Likewise, it is necessary to carry out a socio-environmental study of the environment, which is nothing more than a previous environmental diagnosis carried out on a specific geographical area that will allow identifying the environmental conditions present in that environment prior to the completion of the project.

This preliminary diagnosis includes all the socio-cultural, biotic and abiotic aspects of the ecosystem of the area involved. In short, it is about defining, identifying and characterizing in detail the biotic and abiotic component of that ecosystem, that is, the environment.