Increased industrialisation brings need for CEC approvals

By so doing, they would be ensuring the sustainable development of the country’s ecology and saving themselves from facing punitive sanctions from the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) for non-compliance with its CEC regulations.

A CEC is a certificate issued to an applicant which certifies the environmental acceptability of a proposed industrial, agricultural or other commercial activity, once all of the necessary conditions within the CEC are satisfied by the applicant.

Heavy financial penalties can be incurred by business persons who do not apply for CECs before they begin their commercial operations. If a business person does not do a CEC and goes ahead and establishes his business without proper authorisation, this individual would first be served a Notice of Violation (NOV) by the EMA which tells him that he has to explain to the authority his breaches of the EM Act 2000. If the business person fails to do so, he or she will be served with an Administrative Order (AO), and the matter referred to the Environmental Commission.

The business person could then face the possibility of being heavily fined by the magistrate. These fines could be in the range of $10,000 to in excess of $200,000 depending upon the outcome of the case. In an interview last week, Supervisor of the EMA’sEnvironmental Assessment Unit Cecilie Clarke-Marshall outlined some of the things which business persons and companies must do in applying for CECs.

"The CEC procedures follow the Environmental Management Act of 2001 which outlines the CEC Rules of 2001," she said, "and there are 44 Designated Activities which require CECs and applicants seeking to do development which falls under these designated activities must apply to the EMA.

There’s an application form, which is called Form A and this form asks the applicant to describe the activity that is taking place, to identify where the activity is, certain aspects of the activity which may have an environmental impact and perhaps, mitigation measures to deal with these environmental impacts."

According to the EMA, Designated Activities fall into several categories, namely agriculture, heavy and light manufacturing industries, civil works, natural resource/mineral extraction and processing, waste disposal, transport operations and construction of associated infrastructure and service oriented industries.

Here are some of the 44 Scheduled Designated Activities that the EMA has mandated for CEC application by business persons and the commercial/industrial sector. Poultry, pig and other animal husbandry and production, establishment of a facility for game propagation, establishment of a facility for mariculture/aquaculture, horticultural farming, timber cultivation or extraction of logs, establishment of a fruit or vegetable farm, generation of electricity, clearing, excavation, grading and land filling, waterproofing/caulking/paving, establishment of institutional facilities and other facilities, establishment of hotels, guesthouses etc, land reclamation, coastal or offshore construction or modification and dredging activities, manufacture or processing of foods, food products and condiments, manufacture of processing foods, food products and condiments, establishment of a facility for granaries and grain mills, establishment of a facility for sugar, establishment of a facility for alcoholic beverages, wines and spirits, exploration for crude oil or natural gas, establishment of a facility for materials used in construction and for the establishment of a facility for petroleum products, petrochemicals or petrochemical products.

Clarke-Marshall said that once the application comes into the EMA, and is assigned a CEC Reference Number, then an officer is assigned to the case and, under the CEC Rules, the authority is obligated to acknowledge the receipt of the application within 10 working days of receiving it.

"Now, that acknowledgment is not a just simple ‘yes’, we’ve received," she stated, "for what we have to do within those ten days is assess the application, preliminary as separate from the application, conduct a site visit which is done by environmental officer or regulatory compliance officers.

These officers are responsible for coordinating and processing the file, so then the officer contacts the applicant who goes out for a site visit, more information is added to that application. So that by day ten, the applicant would know from the EMA or would be acknowledged from the EMA that maybe, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) might be required and it might be subject to further information resulting from the site visit and the processing of Form A where we realised that certain things might not have been answered in detail."

She stressed that an applicant is required to go out and do a site visit during the preliminary assessment site visit with the regulatory compliance officer.

"Yes, definitely because the applicant is able to discuss with the officer, have a meeting on site, explain the progress in more detail thus helping the officer get a better understanding of the proposed activity."

According to an EMA ecological guide booklet, an EIA is an environmental planning and management tool which may be used in the CEC process depending on the proposed activity. An EIA is the process for identifying the likely effects on the environment of carrying out particular activities and for conveying this information to members of the public and those responsible for making decisions on the proposed activities.

Clarke-Marshall said that an EIA is not neccessary for all CEC applicants.

"Not for all of them," she added, "but there are certain projects that would require an EIA and certain projects may not have to have an EIA.

She continued, "And how do you determine these projects? There is a standard operating procedure that’s recently been developed and now being tested. And that procedure, basically, deals with the determination of whether an application needs an EIA or not.

So, there are certain applications where there may arise significant negative impacts, so we could put that application through a SOP or Standard Operations Procedures so that we could determine whether that application requires an EIA."

She gave an example of where someone or some corporation might want to put up a housing development in a coastal area or a resort close to an environmentally sensitive area like a national park or wildlife reserve.

"We’d normally pass such an application through a SOP document to determine whether an EIA is necessary or not," she revealed, "but there are some applications that, for instance, if you apply for reclaimed land, we generally ask for an EIA because land reclamation involves getting information about the oceanography of an area, all the different issues involving coastlines so therefore, in terms of the information provided, we’d feel that is one activity that we’d definitely need an EIA."

Clarke-Marshall disclosed that another industrial activity where a CEC applicant might need to do an EIA would be in the hydro-carbon sector.

"The drilling of exploratory and production of oil wells in the oil and gas sector, so the energy sector, when an applicant applies to drill, whether it’s an exploration well or a well for production, they would be required to do an EIA. If an applicant is applying to do any large scale industrial development, such as an aluminium plant, we would require them to do an EIA."

She revealed that an SOP document allows the authority to carefully examine the proposed project, identify all of its aspects and components and what are the social, biophysical and ecological impacts etc, on the environment.

"So when we have that set of preliminary assessments of the project," she said, "we can then say, definitely EIA and then it helps us to get the information to draft the Terms of Reference (TOR). The TOR is a guide for the developer and public as to how the EIA study should be conducted and what should be in the EIA study.

Clarke-Marshall continued, "It also allows the public to participate in the process because once the EMA, together with the applicant drafts that TOR, then the public has an opportunity to comment on the TOR. There is a 28 day statutory time limit to comment on the applicant, so when the TOR comes in and it’s finalised, it should have taken into consideration the views of the general public, including State agencies and other stakeholders."

She said the applicant receives or is issued his TOR with a fee attached which, depending upon the activities involved in the project, can range from $5,000 to $600,000. "For the drilling of production wells, the minimum charge will be $100,000, if your project involves a waste water treatment plant or sewage treatment plant, that’s $100,000 cost, provided that is a major part of the project."

When it comes to a timber operation company, the operator might not have to do an EIA but it depends on the activity. She said the EMA has recently issued 16 CECs to the Forestry Division for the division’s harvesting season which is to start soon.

"Being a government agency does not exempt you from the rules," she emphasised. Clarke-Marshall noted that the EIA in the EMA goes through a very comprehensive and detailed review process which allows the public to be involved in the authority’s decision making process. She stressed that just because an enterpreneur does and submits an EIA to the EMA, it does not mean that he would get a CEC.

"When the EIA is submitted," she revealed, "two things happen, firstly, the EIA is prepared for public comment, so there’s a 30 to 40 day comment period where the EIA document is lodged in various places throughout TT and that’s where the public has the opportunity to comment and submit proposals to the EMA. The other aspect of the review process is that when the EIA is submitted, the EMA pulls together a team of national experts, including development stakeholders ministries and perhaps, regional and international experts to assist with the process."

From July 2001 to the current time, three CEC applications have been rejected while 1,300 applications have been processed. Approximately 185 applicants have been successful in their CEC applications. It remains to be see what will be the price of industrial progress for this country’s environment, even with the legal requirements of CECs.

Environmentalist and hunter Buddie Miller said CECs are vitally necessary otherwise "everybody will do their own and to hell with the environment."

He claimed, "The CECs are there as a means of regulating the activities out there but the big no-no is that the CECs, like everything else in the EM Act, is undermined by a clause that says the minister may give instructions of a general or specific nature to the authority, which means that if the Government wants to flatten Chaguaramas to make it into a big housing estate, then the minister can instruct the authority to do just that."

"What use then is having the EMA when the minister can override the authority anytime it wants and say that Tarouba, Union Estate and the aluminium smelter must happen?" he asked.

Former Independent Senator and renowned environmentalist Dr. Julian Kenny agreed with Miller on the need for CECs.

"They are most certainly necessary," he remarked, "to make sure that people are complying with proper development activities that do not destroy the environment.

CECs are only required for a limited number of activities like building a road over a kilometre or for setting up a smelter, then you’d need a CEC."

He said that Section Five of the EM Act permits the minister to give, from time to time, some general directions to the authority but that it could be lead to its abuse by the respective minister and, by extension, the Cabinet.

"It is a loophole for extensive abuse," he stressed, "which has been exploited and will continue to be exploited in the future."