Plan to cap EIA/EHIA process to under a year 'would guarantee problems'

Reducing the study time for Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and Environmental Health Impact Assessment (EHIA) would lower the quality of such studies, they said.

However, the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP) has said there is still no concrete move on a change yet. It revealed that it has a plan to hand over some EIA/EHIA considerations to local bodies to reduce the workload at the central office and quicken the assessment consideration process.

 Prof Renu Vejaratpimol, from the Faculty of Science at Silpakorn University, said the shortening the EIA/EHIA study period would result in more imprudent impact studies and cause projects to be problematic. 

“An EIA is about studying the impact of a project on the nearby environment and people. It is not easy work that can be done in a short period of time. The nature of environment in the area concerned has to be closely studied and it can be very complex,” Renu explained.

Last month, Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak disclosed that the government had a plan to cap the EIA/EHIA process period to no more than one year, in order to promote investment.

“We have a high standard of EIA consideration; yet, we still regularly see the problems from many development projects. It is clear that if we shorten EIA consideration, a poor impact study and problems from the poorly-studied projects are guaranteed,” Renu said.

Renu, who examined the environmental impact on people around Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate, gave an example of Ta Guan Bay near Map Ta Phut Seaport. She said even though the seaport passed EIA consideration, the bay was severely polluted by transport activity and coal dust, which directly affected the marine ecosystem and local fishermen.

“In many developed countries, EIA research normally requires years of study, not less than a year, as the government has planned,” she stressed.

On the side of ONEP, the main EIA/EHIA consideration agency, Raweewan Bhuridej, secretary-general of the agency, said that no solid plan had been made yet to reduce the EIA/EHIA consideration process.

Raweewan said the law allowed ONEP to prepare im-pact reports within the limited timeframe of 105 days, which is similar to the international standard.

She explained that delay in the EIA/EHIA process usually happens in the research editing process, when the research was not well covered or incomplete. Many projects take more than six months to complete their editing and to resubmit the research.

“According to our statistics, we normally take 58 to 100 days to consider a submitted EIA study, but the editing process takes around 10 to 206 days,” she said.

“It is easier for the project owner to claim that their project is delayed by the EIA consideration process, but indeed it is late because they spend too much time on editing their EIA study.”

In order to reduce the workload of ONEP – decentralising the power to local authorities and speeding up the EIA/EHIA process – Raweewan said ONEP allowed Bangkok and ten provinces to set up expert groups to examine impact reports at the local level.

She assured that the quality of EIA/EHIA consideration by local authorities was of similar standard as ONEP, as the qualification of expert groups is bound to ONEP rules.

Renu emphasised that rather than trying to shorten the EIA/EHIA process, it should be intensified, especially in the auditing process.

“Many projects have problems after an EIA is granted because people do not comply with the EIA report and the authorities don’t regularly check on projects,” she explained.

“I have suggested that there should be a third party inspector to review projects, and if there are problems caused by EIA violation, punishment should go not only to the project’s owner, but the inspector as well.”