New regulations have been introduced with the aim of strengthening the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure required for major developments.
The new rules, published by the government last week, transpose an EU directive from 2014 and introduce new topics including human health, climate change, and vulnerability to major accidents or disasters into the assessment process.
They also aim to make EIA reports more understandable to the public, particularly with regards to assessments of the current state of the environment and alternatives to the proposal in question, including a comparison of environmental effects between different options.
The EIA procedure, which is carried out by the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) as part of a permit application process, assesses and predicts likely significant environmental impacts of a proposed development, and is also open to public consultation.
It is usually required for major developments, or developments in sensitive locations, but can be requested whenever the ERA believes there may be significant environmental impacts that will not be sufficiently addressed in the normal application process.
The time frames for public consultation have been extended
The new rules specifically state that projects cannot be “fragmented” into smaller projects to circumvent assessment or screening, a practice environmental groups warned of last March when a large residential proposal in Luqa was successfully split in two to evade an EIA.
The time frames for public consultation have also been extended from 21 days to a minimum of 30 days, while the ERA must also ensure that all the information and conclusions in the report are still up to date when a final decision is taken.
Competent authorities, including consultants engaged by the developers to carry out the EIA studies, will also need to prove their objectivity to avoid conflicts of interest.
The law sets penalties for breaches that result in the risk of environmental damage, including fines of up to €230,000 or €460,000 for first or subsequent offences respectively, or a two-year prison sentence.
In line with the EU directive, the new law also allows the ERA to exempt, on a case-by-case basis, national defence projects from an EIA if the minister responsible declares that it would result in “disclosure of confidential information which would undermine defence purposes”.
Similar provisions apply to projects which are intended for civil emergency response, and any “project that is adopted by a specific act of national legislation”, although in the latter case the government would have to inform the European Commission of any exemptions.
Existing laws already exempt projects carried out on land under the control of the police and army from a full development application. These exemptions were applied for the AFM to construct a controversial concrete hangar at Haywharf in 2013, and again for a massive public shooting range on police grounds at Ta’ Kandja this year.