Starting up; early stages - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 97

strongly recommends such consultation and, as noted in Chapter 3, since the
implementation of the amended Directive in 1999, the developer can now ask the LPA
for a formal “scoping opinion” on the information to be included in an EIS.
Scoping should begin with the identification of individuals, communities, local
authorities and statutory consultees likely to be affected by the project; good practice
would be to bring them together in a working group and/or meetings with the developer.
One or more of the impact identification techniques discussed in Section 4.8 can be used
to structure a discussion and suggest important issues to consider. Other issues could
include:
• particularly valued environmental attributes;
• those impacts considered of particular concern to the affected parties;
• the methodology that should be used to predict and evaluate different impacts;
• the scale at which those impacts should be considered; 1
• broad alternatives that might be considered.
Reference should be made to relevant national, regional and local development plans,
subject plans and government policies and guidelines, which we discuss in Section 4.7.
Various alternatives should be considered, as discussed in Section 4.5. The result of this
process of information collection and negotiation should be the identification of the chief
issues and impacts, an explanation of why other issues are not considered significant,
and, for each key impact, a defined temporal and spatial boundary within which it will be
measured. Some developers, such as the Highways Agency for England, produce a
scoping report as a matter of good practice. This indicates the proposed coverage of the
EIA and the uncertainties that have been identified and can act as a basis for further
studies and for public participation.
Other countries (e.g. Canada and The Netherlands) have a formal scoping stage, in
which the developer agrees with the competent authority or an independent EIA
commission, sometimes after public consultation, on the subjects the EIA will cover. The
EC (2001b) has published a scoping checklist. In addition guidance on impacts normally
associated with particular types of projects are being developed by various government
and other regulatory agencies (e.g. (UK) Environment Agency (2002) and Government of
New South Wales (1996)).
The importance of scoping and consultation early in the EIA process was highlighted
in a research report for the UK Department of the Environment (DoE 1996). It identified
early consultation and scoping as very important for the quality of the EIS, for all
participants in the EIA process. Indeed it can be argued that one of the most valuable
roles of the EIA process is to encourage such consultation.
4.5 The consideration of alternatives
4.5.1 Regulatory requirements
The US Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ 1978) calls the discussion of
alternatives “the heart of the environmental impact statement”: how an EIA addresses
alternatives will determine its relation to the subsequent decision-making process. A