Appellant says EPA did not address submission on significant impacts

Apr 04, 2022 News

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EAB hearing on waiver of EIA for new DHB…

Kaieteur News – The Environmental Assessment Board (EAB)) last Tuesday hosted a hearing on objections to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to waive an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the new Demerara River Bridge, at the Cara Lodge Hotel on Quamina Street, Georgetown.
The purpose of the hearing was to determine whether the EPA made an acceptable decision in November 2021, when it waived the EIA for the bridge and whether the EAB should reverse the decision. Ms. Simone Mangal-Joly objected to the waiver on the grounds that the EPA needed the engineering designs for the bridge to draw conclusions on likely impacts, and that the EPA failed to justify the waiver with the reasons it published.

The hearing gave the EPA an opportunity to defend its decision to exempt the Ministry of Public Works’ project from the study. There was a presentation from the Ministry of Public Works, followed by one from Ms. Mangal-Joly, the appellant, and the EPA, respectively.
The Ministry of Public Works spoke to a list of undisputed benefits the project would have, noting that upwards of 20,000 vehicles traverse the existing bridge daily and the traffic flow would be greatly eased by the new four-lane bridge. Also, river vessels would not have to wait for the bridge to open. The Ministry showed an artist’s impression of the bridge, but did not present engineering designs of the structure.
Mangal-Joly commenced her presentation by stating that the benefits of the project were not in dispute, adding that the purpose of the hearing was whether the EPA’s reasons for waiving the EIA were convincing. She began by explaining that a main purpose of an EIA was specifically to look at how different environmental receptors and subgroups of stakeholders would be affected and to determine ways to minimize or mitigate those effects. She explained that with a project such as the bridge, with an elevated access ramp road for vehicles to get up to the bridge, the impact assessment and design process must go together, as the design is often altered based on modelling of impacts. She argued that the EPA was putting the cart before the horse in waiving the EIA.
Fatal Gaps
She pointed to two gaps that were “fatal” to the EPA’s decision to waive an EIA. The first was the EPA failed to address the hydromorphology dynamics of the proposed bridge, and the second was that the EPA failed to account for the impacts of the ramp road that would have to be constructed to get vehicles up and onto the bridge. This would have to be an elevated road running for quite some distance along communities such as Nandy Park and Republic Park and would result in vehicles spewing pollution down on communities below.
Hydromorphology impacts
On her first point, Mangal-Joly used technical illustrations of how water flows around structures anchored to a riverbed, illustrating how piers affect erosion and sediment flow. She noted that, “A floating bridge has a lot less impacts than one that has piers… and we are dealing here with a river that gets very high siltation with a heavy rainfall season…there is carving, there is deposition…the river bottom can change completely.”
She explained that this can lead to sandbanks forming in certain areas, even the channel of the river can be altered. “You can silt up the mouth of the river, there are all these stakeholders downstream, none of whom have been identified by the EPA: Oil and gas shore base operations that have to navigate that river; the brand new investments going in and the existing ones; cargo shipping; the bauxite company coming from up the river, ordinary fisherfolk who have their boats there etcetera. So if you are going to talk about a likely impact, and you are gonna waive an EIA, you have to have your ducks lined up in a row to talk about hydromorphology dynamics.”
Mangal-Joly contended that failing to consider this was a fatal gap in the EPA’s decision to waive the EIA. She argued that the EPA cannot know these impacts without an impact modeling study, which cannot be had without a design for the bridge.

Phantom roads
Even though the East Bank Demerara by-pass road is currently in the making, the environmentalist in her appeal to the EAB said that the EPA did not address how 20,000 vehicles per day would get up onto the bridge and the associated impacts of this access road. The EPA also failed to identify the stakeholders and likely impacts along this feeder road: “It doesn’t talk about the homesteads, the business operations and specific schools…all of that is part of the impact area of the bridge,” she reasoned. She said that the matter is being treated as if 20,000 vehicles per day will just fall out of the sky and land at elevation on the bridge.
Traffic related air and noise pollution
Mangal-Joly explained that pollution related to highways such as fine particulate matter and nitrous oxide cause major health issues including cardiovascular disease, asthma, and lung cancer. She explained that stakeholders living downwind of the bridge and its access ramp would be exposed to harmful levels of pollution and nowhere is this type of pollution even mentioned or considered in the EPA’s decision to waive an EIA. Worse yet, the EPA made the most unscientific and unacceptable conclusion about these likely impacts.
In its Screening Decision, the EPA said, “Impacts related to dust emissions and traffic air emissions during construction and operation are expected. Main potential receptors are residents and commercial activities within the vicinity of Nandy Park. However, the impacts are expected to be neutral as the area is already exposed to these impacts from the current traffic and bridge.”
But Mangal-showed the Ministry of Public Work’s statistics on how the baseline level of traffic on the current Demerara Bridge has been rising since 2012, as well as the Ministry’s projection of traffic increase in the next twenty years. She said that the EPA came to an unacceptable conclusion, especially considering traffic increases with the new housing developments planned for Region 3 as well as the Wales Industrial Estate, which would be adding more commercial vehicles to the mix.
Moreover, the idea that only Nandy Park and not all the other communities such as Republic Park and others would be exposed was simply inaccurate, pointing out that the ramp road would be at elevation therefore polluting communities below.
Mangal-Joly also addressed noise impacts, reviewing how chronic road noise is linked to increased heart attacks, strokes, low birth weight and low cognitive ability in children. She also showed the EAB a map illustration of how an EIA process would work, pointing out that it was unacceptable to draw a broad brush and dismiss impacts. The task was to identify specific pockets and subgroups of stakeholders that would be affected by dangerous levels of noise, air pollution, or even pile driving impacts for the construction of the land-based ramp road, and then targeting those areas for mitigation measures or shifting the design to minimize impacts.
She argued that the EPA was acting irrationally by brushing aside likely impacts without knowing the design elements of the bridge and was in fact telling the public that the significance of both known and unknown impacts was low and they need not worry about having an EIA.
She underscored that without the statutory EIA process, the EPA would be picking and choosing who it wanted to engage rather than allowing the affected public access to take part at key stages of the impact assessment.
The EPA during its presentation stated that it had relied on many studies to make its decision. The main one was the feasibility study conducted by Lievense CSO in 2017 where different bridge options and alignments were considered. It also said a social and environmental impact assessment was done in that study.
Additionally, the agency noted that it had been engaged with the Ministry of Public works assessing possible impacts of the bridge, including relocation of 22 households to make way for the bridge and moving utility installations.
However, the EPA did not provide specifics or evidence to rebut Ms. Mangal-Joly’s points of the appeal. They did not account for where the river piers would be located, their size, shape or how they would affect the river morphology and downstream stakeholders.
The Agency provided a map of the roads that would feed the bridge but did not account for the long ramp road that would have to be built to get cars up onto the bridge or address the specific pockets of air pollution and noise pollution, and which communities would be affected and why they concluded the effects would be insignificant.
After the EPA’s presentation, the public asked several questions. Among these, they asked the EPA to show the traffic data it was relying on to come to its conclusion that there would be no significant impacts, but the EPA did not provide any. They asked about why there was a dangerous curve on the bridge, but there was no actual design for the bridge or designers at the hearing. One gentleman spoke about the adverse impacts on all the businesses that were built up around the current Demerara Harbour Bridge and how they would be affected by the closure of the bridge was not being considered.
Ms. Mangal-Joly pointed out that the Leviense CSO study, which the EPA was leaning heavily on to justify not requiring an EIA, was a study of different bridge options and it specifically stated that an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment would be required for the bridge option selected in accordance with the laws of Guyana.
She also said that the EPA had admitted on public record to subverting the law by waiving the requirement for an EIA but carrying on an impact assessment behind the public’s back with the Ministry of Public Works and stakeholders that they pick and choose.
She underscored several times that the decision before the EAB was not only whether the EPA acted rationally in deciding to waive the EIA, but whether it acted properly and had the relevant information before it in November 2021 when it granted the waiver.

 

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