Environments at Risk

“Risk” is an awkward word. It has been taken over by scientists and economists. They think risk must be measured; and expressed as a numerical probability that something unwanted will happen (Crouch and Wilson 1982; Moore 1983). And so it must — sometimes. Fortunately, we can still use the word “risk” in a general way to mean that we might have a problem if we do so and so. If we discharge raw sewage here, swimmers run the risk of catching infectious hepatitis. That is how I will use “risk” in this book.

Construction causes environmental impact. Regardless what is being built — a valley-wide dam, a set of nuclear power plants, a coal strip mine — there is risk of environmental changes from the way in which it is built. The bigger the project, the greater the effect.

The risk of toxic chemicals catastrophically contaminating our food was realised in the 1950s. The name of the city where it happened is now a synonym for this type of risk: Minamata disease.

A mine extracts rock from the ground, from near-surface by a pit or strip, or from underground by tunnel. It processes the rock, separating ore from overburden or other waste, and it mills the ore to produce a concentrate. This in turn is passed to a factory for smelting, refining or other process (Fig. 4.1).

A pulp and paper mill is a factory producing organic chemicals. It starts with biological materials, trees, and processes them into woodfibre — in a form which can be exported as rolled-up strips of solid pulp, or its byproduct, paper. Along the way, organic materials are inevitably wasted and lost — these include beneficial nutrients, dangerously changed hydrocarbons (chlorinated), and smothering woodfibre (Fig. 5.1). The wastes also include a mix of toxic chemicals used in the pulping and paper-making processes, such as chlorine and zinc. Finally, there are natural inorganic toxins wasted — different trees have bioaccumulated different trace metals from their ecosystem as they grew.

Sanitary sewage is the mixture of human body wastes, water and chemicals which must be disposed of in some healthy, inoffensive way when people live together. Most cities and towns nowadays have chosen to dispose of these body wastes by water-flushing systems, although the hardware varies from sitting-toilet to squat-hole.

On March 16, 1978, the supertanker AMOCO CADIZ of the Standard Oil Company ran aground on a rocky reef about 2.5 km off Portsall, France, on the southeast shore of the Channel, and spilled about 200,000 tonnes of crude oil.

If point impacts (see Chaps. 2–6) are clustered together, they create larger scale problems of multiple and dispersed impacts (Fig. 8.1). Inland seas such as the Mediterranean, Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Iran, all suffer both. The problems are regional, and the risk must be assessed and controlled by co-operation between agencies. Many estuaries suffer in the same way but on a smaller scale.

Like any other usable product, environmental impact assessments need quality controlling, to ensure that product users get their money’s worth. This is a form of auditing: an examination of the environmental records.

Engineered developments nowadays need authority to proceed from at least one controlling agency. And when they do proceed, they are regulated in their operations by government.

Impact assessments determine facts: what happened, where and when. These facts can then be used. But they must flow to decision-makers, and they must be perceived as the facts they are. If acted upon, predictable new situations develop from facts.

If you examine the Table of Contents, you will see that several topics and issues pervade this book. They should be considered by anyone involved in environmental impact assessment, since they affect the quality of the product, hence the value of any risk predictions.