Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 09, 2023 Editorial
Kaieteur News – We thought that the people at Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would have learned a sharp, embarrassing lesson in the matter of Schlumberger and the waiving of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The Court came down hard on the EPA, and the thinking was that amends would be made going forward, that there would be a stronger, better, wiser EPA. We have to admit that we were wrong all along, that to expect anything that protects and looks out for the interests of Guyanese is a lost cause with Guyana’s EPA.
For what we have happening again is that, according to Guyana’s EPA, there is no EIA needed for the 300-megawatt (MW) gas-fired power plant at the Wales complex. Clearly, the EPA has its head up in a place that is dark and unmentionable. By what standard of comprehensive evaluation does the EPA conclude that the impacts from the power plant would be negligible, hence an EIA exemption is granted? Given what a Texas-based group that did a cumulative assessment stated in the clearest terms about a separate EIA for the power plant, why is the EPA going down this EIA road? If most of these sensitive structures and plants, from what comes out of the EPA, do not require an EIA, then what does? Does anything of significance require an EIA? From our assessment of the EPA’s postures and actions, we would have to answer in the negative.
The EPA has dug itself into a deep hole. In an effort to justify the EIA exemption for the power plant stand-alone EIA, Guyana’s EPA made mention of the Cumulative Impact Assessment (CIA) done by an independent entity, which encircled ExxonMobil’s Gas-To-Energy (GTE), the Natural Gas Liquids Plant, and the power plant now under the microscope for an EIA. According to the EPA, the completed “CIA concluded that there will be no significant impacts from the combined activities/projects.”
In contrast to that clear, bold statement by Guyana’s EPA, the people who conducted the Cumulative Impact Assessment, Environmental Resources Management, said what can only be interpreted as the opposite. The company made sure that they went on record to insist that the power plant being pursued by the Guyana Government would still require its own separate ‘Environmental Authorization process’ (“Govt. relies on non-existent EIA study for Power Plant” – KN January 7). Just so that this is crystal clear, here are ERM’s own words from its study: “The Power Plant will not be owned and operated by EEPGL and is being proposed by a separate proponent under a separate Environmental Authorisation process. The Power Plant thus is not included in the Project within the EIA (with the exception that the Power Plant is considered as part of the cumulative impact assessment)”.
We take this to another level and ask another question: how do the people at the EPA look at themselves in the mirror? And another: how do they live with themselves when there are these EIA developments that are nothing but a repeated repugnance? Daily, there is greater clarity on why the PPPC Government was so quick to get rid of the former EPA Executive Director, Dr. Vincent Adams. We can almost hear the echoes: a separate EIA is needed, and a separate EIA it will be.
We do not want to give the EPA an exemption, but there is the strong sense that this crucial State agency is only following orders from the politicians, who could care less about environmental impacts, and possible exposures to those in the vicinity. This is par for the course because not too long ago, the Government was all confidence that it had sufficient equipment, coverage, and readiness in the event of a fire, or other problem, at the Wales complex, where the power plant is to be constructed. What is going on here? Why is Guyana’s EPA going to such lengths to insist that a separate EIA is not required for the Power Plant, that it was fully covered under the combined study (CIA), when the people who did the EIA study is saying otherwise? In effect, that it was not? Something is afoot, and it is neither protective nor confidence-building for Guyanese.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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