The influence of geotechnical and geohydrological studies on EIA decision making in South Africa

Abstract

The overall aim of this study was to investigate the effect of geotechnical and geohydrological reports on EIA decision making. The relation between geohydrological and geotechnical specialist recommendations and mitigation measures in the EMP was examined, followed by an investigation of the relation between the EMP and the conditions and obligations of the decision (Environmental Authorisation). A review package that consisted of 29 criteria was generated and applied to each role player namely the specialist, environmental assessment practitioner and the authority. The list of criteria relating to geotechnical and geohydrological aspects were grouped under Review areas 1 (criteria 1 - 13) and 2 (criteria 14 - 24) respectively. There were also several additional issues (Review area 3) that did not clearly fall into the geotechnical or geohydrological fields, but rather belong to other departments, such as architecture, health, safety, etc. The trail of decision making was systematically extracted from the specialist reports, EIA reports and finally what was recommended and required in the authorization. This delivered a data set of 3 x 29 review scores (A, B, C, F and N) for every report, which were analyzed by means of basic descriptive statistics. Scores were converted to S (success) and F (fail) to reflect the effect on decision making. Different permutations of successes (S) and failures (F) were investigated to relate cases, performance and role players to decision making. The ideal permutation, SSS (high score for all three role players) scored 79%, which suggested that the specialist reports are adequately reflected in conditions of authorization in the majority of cases. The remaining fraction of cases is all some form of mismatch between the role players' recommendations. These are cases where good decisions followed weak specialist and/or EAP performances, and where good specialisUEAP performance was followed by poor decisions. Both the EAP and authority comply well with the specialist reports with a relatively low failure and the EIA process could be judged as successful. Specialist reports do influence decision making and results suggest that the use of specialist reports are essential in South African EIA