Engineering experts believe the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) erred when it opted not to request an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the new Demerara Harbour Bridge since the information contained in such a study is integral to how firms would propose a design.
“The winning consortium will have to design the bridge. Ultimately, you only will have a design and alignment when that firm designs that bridge, because as it is, all that is known now is that it is a fixed bridge. So it is really mind boggling why the EPA would just renege on having such important and integral information,” an international engineer, who asked not to be named, told Sunday Stabroek.
“Everything that needs to be done should be guided from the data and information collected from that EIA and to not have it potentially opens up the country or puts it at risk of not getting value for dollar. I think it is premature of the EPA… to make a statement like it did … they perhaps don’t understand the implications of what they are saying and clearly weren’t guided by expert engineering personnel,” another engineer added.
Meanwhile, the EPA continues to remain mum about its decision and its own about-face on an EIA while environmentalists are warning that it has potential environmental consequences.
The engineers have now added to the objections by environmentalists on the decision to forego an EIA and explained that the winning company will have to undertake a number of different studies even before it can propose a design, which should have had as a pre-requisite that the EIA be done.
The experts say it is unfair to both the company that will be working only with an Environmental Management Plan and people of Guyana who will ultimately have to pay costs whatever set costs are given for the crossing.
“The winning company has to do a lot of work even before actual construction can begin. This requires data collection and there has to be bore holes and samples taken. What you will have are piers, and depending on the design, you can have any number. It is those numbers that will have an impact of the flow of the river. The Demerara River is a fast flowing river. Depending on how many piers are there, it can affect the velocity or how the river flows. Once there is a change in velocity, you tend to have sedimentation of some sort. So depending on how many piers there are, then there may or may not at all be an issue with sedimentation.”
And if there are many piers, the sedimentation can be so much that “everything downstream will be affected” and it can potentially be an issue that affects Georgetown’s ports. “In a worst case scenario, it will affect both the port and the channel,” the engineer said.
“You only know that when you have the design and do a hydraulic design which predicts or measures the flow and do the proposed flow of the river and that determines sedimentation. Everything anyone says about what will happen is just on assumptions because there is no design and you have no EIA,” he added.
During construction, there can be some impediments to waterway traffic but with careful planning this can be minimalised, according to another engineer. “When you design a bridge, vessels will pass between the piers and provisions will be made for the free movement of vessels. If the design of the bridge is quite impressive, it will facilitate this. I don’t anticipate any major hindrance to the river. They will have to shift where the vessels wait to transit the harbor bridge.”
Worrying to one local engineer is if the bridge will pose any impacts on domestic pilots landing at the Ogle Airport as aircraft landing at Ogle would line up with airport from over the river. Depending on how high the pylons for the cable are, it could obscure the landing path for aircraft.
Although the Ministry of Public Works had proposed that an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) for the project be done, it was surprisingly advised by the EPA that it was not necessary and the ministry has acted on that advice.
Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill explained that the public should not take the fact that there will be no ESIA to mean that the ministry is absolved from environmental commitments.
“It is not that we are absolved of any environmental scrutiny for this project, it is just that the detailed work for the ESIA, the EPA is saying it will not be required for this new Demerara Harbour Bridge,” he pointed out.
“That is what we do; just following the EPA advice,” he added.
After saying last year November that an ESIA would be done, the EPA prompted shock in some circles when on August 18 it said that an application for an environmental permit for the new bridge had been received and in its judgement it will not require an ESIA.
The public was then given 30 days to consider the EPA decision and whether an appeal should be lodged with the Environmental Assessment Board (EAB).
The new notice saw environmentalist Simone Mangal-Joly writing the EAB – the body which determines appeals of decisions by the EPA – objecting to the EPA’s decision while pointing out that it was a reversal of an earlier position that acknowledged the need for one.
The decision against an ESIA has been seen by some as intended to enable the speedy construction of the bridge.
Mangal-Joly contended that the EPA has also not provided the reasons why it determined that this activity would not have a significant impact and is therefore exempt from an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
“This further undermines the public engagement intention of Section 11(2) (a) of the EPA Act, which specifies that the Agency must publish the reasons why it arrived at the decision that the project will not significantly impact the environment at the time that it publishes its decision and gives the public 30 days to review and appeal the decision,” she argued.
For such a substantial change as overturning the requirement for an EIA, she noted that one would have expected the agency to be even more diligent in providing reasons.
“For the EPA to bypass the requirement of an EIA, with no justification but an altered project description that misrepresents the activity, is jeopardizing the regulatory process designed to protect our citizens, environment, and investments. This begs the question whether the Government of Guyana, as represented by the EPA, is committed to good governance,” Mangal-Joly added.
Marine life and flora and fauna matters would also not be adequately addressed in just an Environmental Management Plan, another environmentalist contended.
“You need an EIA. Let the EIA guide those assumptions already being made then you can at least have evidence that the country did what it was supposed to do, in the event of anything going wrong. Mangroves will be destroyed, flora and fauna will be obviously be affected, to which degree? Let your EIA guide you. We are really doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t establish what the baseline is upfront so that we can monitor down the line. By not establishing and trying to establish what the environmental impacts are… it can have consequences we may not like,” the environmentalist added.
