Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report quality for hazardous waste treatment facilities in South Africa

Abstract

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a tool used internationally for environmental protection and management to avoid or mitigate the potentially adverse or negative environmental impacts of developments. In South Africa, EIA is required for certain listed developments. EIA has been mandatory in South Africa since 1998, with several regulatory amendments, resulting in various EIA regulatory regimes. The National Environmental Management: Waste Act 59 of 2008 (NEMWA) provides for a licensing regime specific to such waste management activities. Several papers have been published relating to Environmental Impact Assessment Report (EIAR) quality review covering various sectors, such as mining, water management, biodiversity, explosives, housing development and transport. However, limited research has been conducted specifically on the quality of EIARs for hazardous waste management facilities in South Africa and none has determined EIAR quality across the two EIA regimes. Therefore, the main aim of this research was to determine the quality of a sample of EIARs for hazardous waste treatment facilities in South Africa across the 2010 and 2014 EIA regimes. An adapted Lee and Colley review package was used to review a sample of 14 EIARs. The results indicate that the quality of EIARs for hazardous waste treatment facilities in South Africa is generally satisfactory. Overall, 12 reports were graded satisfactory, and two reports were graded unsatisfactory. However, while the reports were satisfactory overall, there were also a few areas of weakness, areas of strength and a disturbing decline in report quality from 2010 to 2014 in some areas. It was therefore concluded that improvement in the quality of the reports is necessary for enhanced decision-making and best practice. It is recommended that more research be conducted on the quality of EIARs for waste treatment facilities in South Africa. In particular, future researchers might assess a larger sample of EIARS and include those waste activities that were not covered in this study, such as waste disposal and recycling facilities.