Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Environmental Protection Action
(EPA)
Laws/Regulations
(L/Rs)
Enforcement
(E)
(1)
=
x
Enforcement
(E)
Effective Monitoring
(EM)
(2)
=
x
Stiff Penalties (SPs)
Effective Monitoring
(EM)
(3)
Review of project feasibility study to ensure inclusion of EIA constraints including use of
appropriate environmental standards (AESs).
(3.1)
(3.2)
Review of project's final design, to ensure inclusion of EIA constraints including environmental
controls to be followed by construction contractor.
(3.3)
Monitoring of construction contractor's operations to ensure compliance with environmental
controls.
(3.4)
Inspection of final construction to ensure compliance with environmental construction (before
releasing contractor).
(3.5)
Periodic monitoring of project operations to ensure implementation of prescribed EPMs, including
sampling and analyses, to evaluate project's actual environmental impacts, with follow-up to obtain
needed corrections.
Environmental protection action versus enforcement.
120
.
FIGURE 4.4
ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE
Introduction
The previous section on “Introduction” includes preliminary discussion of the
issue of environmental governance in the DCs (i.e., the degree to which attention
is given in the country by the government, by industries, and by environmental
engineering practitioners to the needs for protecting environmental resources from
unnecessary degradation). This section gives additional details.
Situation in DCs versus United States/ICs
As noted in Figure 4.4 the situation in environmental governance in the DCs is
vastly different from that in the ICs, simply because the U.S./IC system embodies
effective monitoring/enforcement to ensure that the project proponent for any
proposed project, both public and private, will actually comply with the require-
ments for EPMs that are specified in the approved EIA (part of the feasibility
study) in the subsequent project implementation stages of final design, construc-
tion, and operation. Usually, the administration of this process in the ICs involves
use of the “permit system” in which the project regulating agency issues a permit
to the project proponent that spells out all of the EIA's EPMs to be carried out by
the proponent, including periodic self-monitoring with periodic reporting, with
public surveillance visits to the regulating agency to check actual environmental
performance (i.e., to check the reliability of the self-monitoring reports). The
project proponent complies simply because the cost of compliance is less than
the cost of penalties for noncompliance. This system has evolved in the ICs in
recognition that effective monitoring/enforcement is essential to gain compliance.
