Environmental Services

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA)

Environmental impact assessments are required for all proposals that trigger listed activities in terms of Government Notices No. R.327 (Listing Notice 1), No. R.325 (Listing Notice 2) and No. R.324 (Listing Notice 3) of the 2017 Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations of the National Environmental Management Act, 1998 (Act No. 107 of 1998).

Basic Assessments

 The Basic Assessment process entails an assessment of the description of the environmental attributes of the site and an investigation into issues and potential impacts. This is achieved by means of a Public Participation Process (PPP), which involves all Interested and Affected Parties (I&AP’s).

The process is designed to ensure that applications for smaller developments, which have less potential for significant social, economic, and biophysical impacts, can be assessed and reviewed in a more concise manner. Any anticipated impacts are typically dealt with by seeking to propose measures to prevent, reduce, mitigate, or manage the effects. Ultimately the process enables the competent authority to take an informed decision.

Cultivation of Virgin Soil Permit Application

The CARA stipulates, amongst other things, that: except on authority of a written permission by the executive officer, no land user shall cultivate any virgin soil: Provided that such authority shall not be required in respect of virgin land for which an approval has been granted in terms of Section 4(A) of the Forest Act, 1972 (Act 68 of 1972).

If a need to cultivate virgin soil arise, an application for permission should be made on a form obtainable from an extension office for this purpose. Such application form shall be completed by the land user of the farm unit on which such virgin soil is situated and shall be lodged at the extension office for the area within which the farm unit concerned is situated, at least three months prior to the intended date of cultivation. An officer may, for the purposes of an investigation deemed necessary to consider such application, direct a land user to dig such soil profile pits as such officer may determine and to take such other steps as such officer may determine.

Water Use Licence Application

A Water Use Licence Application process is required when the risk of impact to a water resource is too high and the proposed activity does therefore not comply with the conditions of a General authorisation. The water use licence application process is undertaken within a period of 300 days which is initiated with the submission of the initial application documents and concludes when a decision is reached by the Department of Water and Sanitation. Contrary to the registration process required for a general authorisation, the water use licence application process requires a site visit to the area where the activity occurs or is proposed; a public participation process; detailed specialist assessments of the likely impacts on water resources and assessment of the application by the competent authority.

Environmental Compliance Auditing

Generally, in terms of environmental management, continuous improvement and enforcement of approved authorisations as completed in an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process have been slow and in most cases completely inexistent. To improve on this aspect, the appointment of on-site Environmental Control Officers (ECOs) has been widely applied. In South Africa, the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) has provided guidelines for Environmental Management Programmes (2005), in which one of the client’s responsibilities is to appoint an ECO regarding the entire duration of the project. The ECO has a direct link to the Project Manager in order to provide feedback with regards to all environmental matters present on-site. Contractors working on relevant projects are answerable to the appointed ECO for any non-compliance and have the responsibility to implement any mitigation measures specified in the EA or EMPr. The ECO should be qualified and competent within the field of environmental management, while the most important requirement remains the independency of the representative ECO.  ECO’s are required to monitor and report on compliance with regards to the approved EA and Environmental Management Programme.