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June
1999 Newsletter
Environmental
Assessment Schedule
The
federal environmental assessment process may take a considerable
length of time. The minimum period is 13-14 months, but
that does not include the time it takes the regional government
to prepare its submissions. We are now awaiting the release
of the draft guidelines for the assessment and the announcement
of who will sit on the review panel. The guidelines set
out the scope of the assessment and provide specific instructions
to the regional government on what must be included in its
submissions. The public will have from 45-90 days to comment
on the draft guidelines.
Once
the guidelines are finalized (perhaps by the end of August),
the ball moves to the Regions court. Within 90 days it must
inform the panel and the public of how long it will take
to prepare its submissions. This may be a considerable length
of time, because the Region has not examined either the
need for the project, nor alternatives to it, since the
1970s. Both these requirements are in the draft terms of
reference. The law requires, and the courts have recently
underlined, that a proponent of a project must carefully
evaluate a reasonable range of alternatives and the impacts
of these alternatives, and must show that the option it
picks is the best one.
When
the Region completes its studies and files its submissions
(called an Environmental Impact Statement), the panels first
task is to assess if these submissions are complete. This
will be a public process which may include meetings. The
public will have a minimum of 60 days to comment and will
be able to ask written questions which the Region must answer.
If the panel concludes that the Regions submissions are
not complete, it will order the Region to finish the job.
The time taken by the Region to do this is also not part
of the 13-months schedule. When the Regions submissions
are finally deemed adequate, a minimum of 45 days notice
will be given for the beginning of public hearings. Even
if the Region spent only 3 months preparing its submissions,
and they were found to be adequate, the public hearings
would not start before May or June of next year. Of course,
if the Region takes a longer time, or does an inadequate
job, the timing will be that much later.
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