July2008:ES&E
7/15/08
5:15 PM
Page 49
Monitoring dictions has long required an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) before resource extraction begins. As a part of the permitting process, the company makes a commitment to keep environmental effects at an acceptable level during the lifetime of the mine or other project. This means that, if environmental parameters are exceeded (i.e. the sediment levels in a nearby watercourse are getting dangerously high, potentially affecting fish-spawning success) corrective action can be taken. The approvals process also includes a commitment to reclaim the affected area to an acceptable condition and to manage the ongoing effects. The best way to tell if the company is meeting its environmental obligations is through ongoing monitoring. This can include a wide range of measurements, including emissions to the air and water, noise levels and wildlife populations. In most cases, the company will hire an external environmental consulting firm to do this work. This is partly because few resource companies have enough of the right professionals on staff,
and partly because outsourcing the work to neutral third party professionals provides greater credibility to the findings. But as the environmental monitoring teams show up with sampling containers, measuring devices and laptops to do the work, they may find some strange gaps in the data they’ve been given. In many cases, the baseline data – the
The approvals process includes a commitment to reclaim the affected area to an acceptable condition. record of what was there before the company started its activities – is not congruent with what the team needs to do the monitoring. Without adequate baseline information giving a full picture of what was there originally, they cannot provide a full picture of any environmental or social impacts of the project. This means that their reports on those impacts will not be as effective as
they could be, in helping the company give evidence of its performance. It is not necessarily the case that the environmental professionals who compiled the baseline data did an inadequate job. It is just that their data-gathering was not done with the needs of the ongoing monitoring in mind. Why does this happen? The main reason is that, prior to the resource company’s receiving regulatory approval for its project, the focus of its senior executives is quite naturally on the need to receive that permit. Other matters, which might include the question of closure and reclamation many years in the future, may be seen as less of a burning priority. But as we’ve seen, environmental and social performance in the short and long term is becoming more and more important. This is particularly important for a junior resource company that wants to demonstrate the viability of its mine or other project in hopes of selling out to a major. In such a case, as many as possible of the environmental continued overleaf...
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