Opinion: Why resource projects really do need impact assessments

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There should have been an impact assessment done on all the provincial and corporate hair on fire over the federal Impact Assessment Act. Had there been one it would have shown very little hair was being singed and most of it was not the result of the act, or of impact assessments. From the recent tone of commentary, you would think impact assessments were taking bread from the mouths of children and causing our economy to crumble. Another look would be helpful.

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If we take a completely hypothetical case, a coal strip mine proposal involving mountaintop removal in the Eastern Slopes, another story emerges. A foreign
company, feeling approval is just a formality, does a lacklustre effort at impact assessment. They are advised at several junctures that the effort is not adequate,
but the company ignores the advice.

When the time comes for a joint federal-provincial review, numerous experts eviscerate the impact assessment produced and the mine proposal fails on
economic, environmental, social and health grounds. This is not the fault of the impact assessment process. Where the fault lies is with inability of the company
to undertake a credible review.

There is a tendency on the part of politicians and corporations to think impact assessments are just a perfunctory hurdle on the way to project approval. What an impact assessment should do is provide a clear-eyed, objective look at a project. When you separate the hype, inflated benefits and rosy projections from reality, projects that seem to be clear winners have a series of significant warts.

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If we want to know the actual costs and benefits of a project, this requires an impact assessment. Competent ones take time, just as the planning of a project should. If we want to know the impact on environmental features, be that water quality, biodiversity and hydrologic response, one season of study will be inadequate. Because governments have consistently avoided assembling baseline information, this becomes the task of an impact assessment, and it can’t be rushed. If it is, we run the risk of project approvals with serious repercussions down the road.

Repercussions can include polluted water, air quality concerns, loss of fish and wildlife species, enhanced downstream flooding and failed reclamation. All of
these have significant costs to the public, rarely to the project proponent. An impact assessment is our insurance policy that undertakes risk analysis and allows
us to know what might bite us at some future point.

Part of a competent impact assessment is looking at the cumulative effect of many things happening on the same landscape. These additive features may mean a
ratcheting up of environmental concerns, with one more project piled on top of others. Part of this is also scrutinizing plans for mitigation, reclamation and
amelioration of project impacts. An impact assessment will shine a light on anything unclear, unplanned or inappropriate.

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Because projects have impacts on people, beyond the usual rhetoric of jobs, tax revenue and spin-off economics, there needs to be adequate and timely
consultation. One thing the Impact Assessment Act has as a benefit, is the opportunity for people affected by a project to have their day “in court.”

Provincial processes discriminate, allowing only those who live next door and might be economically impacted to be heard. The rest of us, even though we may
be downstream water drinkers, breathe the air coming from a project, fish, hunt and recreate in the area, have no say in decisions about approvals.

If reconciliation means anything, it also confers responsibility on project proponents to meaningfully consult with Aboriginal people. This takes time, and it
should. If there is a delay, it is not because we ask for impact assessments of projects; it is because informing people must be a legitimate and planned-for
activity.

If the answer is “yes” to every project, we can dispense with impact assessments and any hope of maintaining water quality, protecting biodiversity and retaining
landscapes with ecological integrity. We can cheerfully ignore health impacts, social issues and dubious economics. Impact assessments give us a sober second look and shouldn’t be viewed, as many would attest, as delaying economic activity.

Rushing project approvals has shown us the wisdom of the Swahili phrase “Haraka haraka, haina baraka”— haste makes waste.

Lorne Fitch is a professional biologist, a retired fish and wildlife biologist and a former adjunct professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence and Travels Up the Creek: A Biologist’s Search For a Paddle.

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