By Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun, July 8, 2011

A public office entrusted with monitoring environmental compliance in multi-billion-dollar industrial projects around the province is not doing its job, a scathing report by the Auditor General of B.C. said Thursday.

Rather than meet its mandate to oversee the implementation of such approved projects, B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office often delegates that role to other ministries and “does not formally track certified project conditions and commitments for compliance,” the audit report found.

“When major projects such as mines, dams or tourist destination resorts are undertaken in the province, British Columbians expect that any potentially significant adverse effects (whether environmental, economic, social, heritage and/or health related) will be avoided or mitigated,” the report said.

“The Environmental Assessment Office is expected to provide sound oversight of such projects. However, this has not been happening.”

The office is currently overseeing the environmental assessment of projects worth more than $30 billion.

Since 1995, the office has rejected outright only one project. Another 115 were approved, 40 remain temporarily inactive, 32 active, and 16 terminated or withdrawn.

In an interview, Auditor General John Doyle said that “I raise my eyebrows whenever conditions are placed on a (project approval) certificate which aren’t enforceable or measurable.

“I ask the question, what’s the point?

“What the government needs is a single focus on compliance to make sure what the government requires to be done is, in fact, done.”

The report focused on policy and did not provide details of any specific cases where environmental harm had been done as a result of lack of monitoring by the Environmental Assessment Office.

“We resisted the temptation to do so,” Doyle said. “We’re looking at the system and how it works, and not to create sensations.”

Environment Minister Terry Lake declined to comment on the report, saying he plans to meet soon with Doyle.

Gwen Barlee of the Wilderness Committee described the report as “frank, to the point, and pretty hard hitting” — further evidence of a broken environmental assessment process needing a complete overhaul.

“It’s largely a rubber stamping process,” she said. “The office has almost no credibility.”

NDP environment critic Rob Fleming said he is concerned that the office “has no idea” what is happening on the ground on approved projects.

Fleming noted it was the Forest Practices Board — not the Environmental Assessment Office — that released a report last month on logging practices at the Toba River and Montrose Creek run-of-river hydro project, about 100 kilometers north of Powell River.

While timber harvesting and roadwork generally complied with requirements, the board found, “some deactivated

spur roads, used to access transmissions towers, were not managed to the same standards required of the forest industry and did not have reestablished natural drainage patterns at the time of the field review, resulting in erosion....

“Also, the proponent didn’t fulfill its commitment to keep any trees that were less than five meters tall for some areas of the transmission line corridor.”

The Environmental Assessment Office employs a staff of nearly 55 staff on a budget of $8.75 million, which includes $1 million in grants to First Nations for funding capacity to participate in the process and $1.3 million to other government agencies to provide technical expertise.

The audit report urges the Environmental Assessment Office to:

• Ensure commitments are clearly written in a measurable and enforceable manner.

• Work with the Ministry of Environment to finalize a policy framework that will provide provincial guidance on environmental mitigation.

• Clarify the post-certification monitoring responsibilities and compliance mechanisms for each commitment.

• Develop and implement a comprehensive compliance and enforcement program that includes an integrated information management system to monitor project progress and ensure compliance.

• Conduct post-certificate evaluations to determine whether environmental assessments are avoiding or mitigating the

potentially significant adverse effects of certified projects.

• Provide appropriate accountability information for projects certified through the environmental assessment process.

The audit report says it is encouraged by the recent appointment of a director of strategy and quality assurance to help rectify the problem.

lpynn@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Source

An Audit of the Environmental Assessment Office's Oversight of Certified Projects

Click here to download the complete report