Environmental Impact Assessments
Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) are at the core of PGL’s environmental services. Our clients typically need an EIA to achieve regulatory approvals for their project. For example, projects that require environmental approvals under the B.C. Environmental Assessment Act (BCEAA), the federal Impact Assessment Act (IAA), Yukon Socioeconomic and Environmental Assessment Act (YESAA), or other development permitting to satisfy local government requirements. We apply our expertise to provide our clients with a wide variety of specialized services to meet their EIA needs.
What is EIA?
Sometimes EIA is known as Environmental Assessment (EA), but they both have the same basic goals:
1 – identify what is important to protect
2 – collect knowledge about the current status of these values
3 – describe and evaluate how a proposed project may change those values
4 – figure out the measures needed to address the impacts of concern
5 – design a way to verify predictions through follow up monitoring.
In a nutshell, these steps aim to define a project (and its environmental commitments) that is acceptable to the people who care!
Many people think of an EIA as the physical report, but it is more than just a report. The report is an important step to compile the outcomes of the EIA steps above. An EIA is an iterative, value-based environmental planning process requiring credible and clear communication at each step. The process is iterative because there is constant feedback from the people that are affected by decisions, making the decisions, or influencing the decisions.
How Can PGL Help You?
Our clients need EIA practitioners that understand how to get the right feedback at the right time so that issues can be addressed as they arise. An EIA process that is too iterative is not addressing issues efficiently enough, which costs a project time and money.
Conflict is a natural part of a decision-making process involving competing values and trade-offs. We have staff trained in conflict resolution to direct respectful, productive dialogue. Trust goes a long way to advance an EIA. This starts with credible professionals with the skills to engage with Indigenous people, public participants, and regulators. Our EIA practitioners are experienced in Indigenous consultation, Indigenous engagement, facilitation, and public consultation.
PGL’s professionals earn their technical credibility by designing and completing environmental baseline studies, such as air quality, soil quality, water quality, fish habitat, vegetation, wildlife inventory, species at risk, etc. Our biologists and scientists are prepared to work with Indigenous groups to learn and use the Indigenous knowledge that may be shared with us to guide and enrich our studies.
Part of a successful EIA is the ability of the project to react to the feedback from baseline studies and feedback from Indigenous and public participants to address possible impacts. Over the years we have developed tools to help projects improve environmental performance. One tool is the creation of an environmental constraints map that identifies sensitive ecosystems, critical habitat and other important areas. This environmental mapping helps to guide early project planning and engineering to avoid impacts early on and make the EIA process easier.
The evaluation phase of an EIA is only successful if the outcomes can be communicated clearly to the people who are affected and make decisions. Our EIA practitioners have completed training in organized reasoning (argumentation) to communicate professional opinions so that discussions with EIA participants can focus on the merits of factual, logical arguments without wasting time for participants to dig through jargon-filled technical gobbledygook.
A key outcome of the EIA is to define the environmental commitments that may achieve approvals. These commitments may take various forms such as a Construction Environmental Management Plan, habitat offsetting /compensation plan, ecological restoration plan, wildlife management plan, spill response plan, waste management plan, Indigenous benefits such as a Community Based Monitoring program and capacity building, and specifications for future environmental permitting and environmental monitoring. Our goal is to provide EIA participants with the assurance that the project has clear plans to ensure environmental compliance with respect the big issues identified in the EIA.
Knowledge of environmental policy and regulation is the cornerstone any successful EIA practice. PGL’s EIA practitioners stay on top of ever evolving policy that dictate how an EIA process will be conducted and the benchmarks for an effective EIA. In addition, since no two EIA projects are ever the same, our skills in environmental project management mean our EIAs are carefully managed to keep our clients informed and in control of our scope, budgets and schedules.
PGL is committed to supporting the growth and improvement of the practice of impact assessment in Canada and internationally. Over the last decade, two PGL staff have served in the role of President of the Western & Northern Canada affiliate of the International Association for Impact Assessment. PGL staff have organized and hosted many events on impact assessment and presented papers at international conferences.