Participation, presentation and review - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 179

likely to become cumbersome and difficult to assimilate and this should
generally be regarded as a maximum… However, the quality of an ES
will not be determined by its length. What is needed is a concise,
objective analysis.
6.4.2 Clarity of communication
Weiss (1989) very well notes that an unreadable EIS is an environmental hazard:
The issue is the quality of the document, its usefulness in support of the
goals of environmental legislation, and, by implication, the quality of the
environmental stewardship entrusted to the scientific community… An
unreadable EIS not only hurts the environmental protection laws and,
thus, the environment. It also turns the sincere environmental engineer
into a kind of “polluter”.
Weiss identifies three classes of error that mar the quality of EIS's communications:
1. strategic errors, “mistakes of planning, failure to understand why the EIS is written and
for whom”;
2. structural errors related to the EIS's organization;
3. tactical errors of poor editing.
An EIS has to communicate information to many audiences, from the decisionmaker, to
the environmental expert, to the lay person. Although it cannot fulfil all the expectations
of all its readers, it can go a long way towards being a useful document for a wide
audience. It should at least be well written, with good spelling and punctuation. It should
have a clear structure, with easily visible titles and a logical flow of information. A table
of contents, with page numbers marked, should be included before the main text,
allowing easy access to information. Principal points should be clearly indicated, perhaps
in a table at the front or back.
An EIS should shun technical jargon . Any jargon it does include should be explained
in the text or in footnotes. All the following examples are from actual EISs:
Wrong: It is believed that the aquiclude properties of the Brithdir seams
have been reduced and there is a degree of groundwater communication
between the Brithdir and the underlying Rhondda beds,
although…numerous seepages do occur on the valley flanks with the
retention regime dependent upon the nature of the superficial deposits.
Right: The accepted method for evaluating the importance of a site for
waterfowl (i.e. waders and wildfowl) is the “1% criterion”. A site is
considered to be of National Importance if it regularly holds at least 1% of
the estimated British population of a species of waterfowl “Regularly” in
this context means counts (usually expressed as annual peak figures),
averaged over the last 5 years.
The EIS should clearly state any assumptions on which impact predictions are based: