Compliance with EIA at enterprises
At enterprises, not only the availability of the EIA conclusion should be checked, but also its observance, emphasized Roman Shakhmatenko, Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine.
Thus, during the state environmental control and supervision, the DEI employees should check not only the availability of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conclusion, but also its observance - from the main characteristics of economic activity to the environmental conditions of its implementation. As well as those indicators that were declared by the entity in the EIA report.
According to Roman Shakhmatenko, EIA requires new knowledge, skills, techniques and actions from state environmental inspectors. In this regard, the Ministry of Environment has started conducting webinars for employees of the State Environmental Inspectorate and its territorial divisions.
They discuss the following issues:
- actions of inspectors when checking the EIA conclusion at enterprises;
- modeling of processes and situations during the inspection;
- conditions of EIA conclusions, the fulfillment of which plays a key role for environmental safety;
- collection of data on the state of the environment in the zone of influence of economic activity;
- procedure for monitoring the fulfillment of additional EIA conditions;
- post-project monitoring and special conditions, the control of which is not provided for in the current unified act of state environmental control inspections.
Based on the results of the above-mentioned webinars and feedback from inspectors, instructions for inspectors on the procedure for checking compliance with environmental impact assessment legislation will be developed and made mandatory for use.
It should be recalled that, according to legislation, activities and projects that have profound environmental consequences must undergo an EIA procedure. They must be carried out taking into account environmental conditions from the Ministry of Environment or at the regional level from local state administrations and the public.
It is the EIA conclusions that allow direct environmental obligations to be imposed on enterprises and organizations. And it is on the fulfillment of these conditions and obligations that attention should be focused during state environmental control (supervision) inspections carried out by state environmental inspectors.