Starting up; early stages - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 111

• “intermediate” data which are reliable but not capable of absolute proof, such as water
quality, land values, vegetation condition and traffic counts, which have variable
values;
• “soft” data which are a matter of opinion or social values, such as opinion surveys,
visual enjoyment of landscape and numbers of people using amenities, where the
responses depend on human attitudes and the climate of public feeling.
Important UK data sources are the Regional Observatories and local authority monitoring
units. These usually provide a range of very useful data on the physical, social and
economic environment; they are reasonably up to date and are increasingly available on
the Internet. Local data can be supplemented in the UK with published data from a wide
range of national government sources—including the Census of Population,
Neighbourhood Statistics, Quality of Life Counts, Regional Trends, Digest of
Environmental Statistics, Transport Statistics —and increasingly from EU sources.
However, much useful information is unpublished or “semi-published” and internal to
various organizations. In the UK, under the EIA regulations, statutory consultees (e.g. the
Countryside Agency, EN, English Heritage and the Environment Agency) are put “under
an obligation to provide the developer (on request) with any information in their
possession which is likely to be relevant to the preparation of the environmental
statement” (ODPM 2003a).
There are of course many other useful non-statutory consultees, at local and other
levels, who may be able to provide valuable information. Local history, conservation and
naturalist societies may have a wealth of information on, for example, local flora and
fauna, rights of way and archaeological sites. National bodies, such as the RSPB and the
Forestry Agency, may have particular knowledge and expertise to offer. Consultation
with local amenity groups at an early stage in the EIA process can help not only with data
but also with the identification of those key environmental issues for which data should
be collected.
Every use should be made of data from existing sources, but there will invariably be
gaps in the required environmental baseline data for the project under consideration.
Environmental monitoring and surveys may be necessary. Surveys and monitoring raise a
number of issues. They are inevitably constrained by budgets and time, and must be
selective. However, such selectivity must ensure that the length of time over which
monitoring and surveys are undertaken is appropriate to the task in hand. For example,
for certain environmental features (e.g. many types of flora and fauna) a survey period of
12 months or more may be needed to take account of seasonal variations or migratory
patterns. Sampling procedures will often be used for surveys; the extent and implications
of the sampling error involved should be clearly established.
Baseline studies can be presented in the EIS in a variety of ways. These often involve
either a brief overview of the biophysical and socioeconomic environments for the area
of study, following the project description, with the detailed focused studies in
subsequent impact chapters (e.g. air quality, geology, employment), or a more
comprehensive set of detailed studies at an early stage providing a point of reference for
future and often briefer impact chapters.
A valuable innovation in the provision and presentation of environmental data is the
increasing use of the Internet and geographical information systems (GIS). GIS are
computer-based databases that include spatial references for the different variables