Environmental Impact Assessment
EIA - The establishment of the facts for discussion
A key document in the development of the Viking Windfarm will be the Environmental Statement.
The studies for the Environmental Statement are only just concluding so the information available at this stage (August 2006) is limited. When information for each chapter becomes available, it will be added to the website and registered visitors will be notified.
The Environmental Statement is the presentation of the results of work undertaken to determine or assess the impact of the proposals on the existing local, national and global environment and then to consider measures to avoid, reduce or offset any adverse effects by mitigation.
The Environmental Impact Assessment is a robust iterative investigation, taking the advice and contribution of numerous stakeholders. Preliminary discussions and official screening and scoping exercises bring out the areas where stakeholders consider there could perhaps be impacts before environmental baseline studies establish the precise factual existing conditions for those potential impacts across the proposed site. The process is both iterative and cyclic and constraints or unavoidable concerns raised by the studies mould the developing project design and then the design is assessed against the baselines to determine the expected impact of actual construction. Once the potential impacts are accurately understood there can then be discussion on mitigation of any discovered impacts. These possible mitigations feed back into the project design to inform a final design that can be submitted for planning approval. While the bulk of the work is undertaken before construction to inform the consents processes, there is monitoring and ongoing research agreed so that if permission is granted, the projected environmental impacts are tested and confirmed or disproved.
Consultation with stakeholders continues throughout every stage to ensure nothing is overlooked.
The Environmental Statement is a considerable document and is broken down into chapters for ease of use. Each chapter covers a particular potential concern and considers the concern, the existing conditions, the potential impacts and potential mitigations.
Primary study topics include:
Copies of the Environmental Statement will be available once it is complete.