Environmental impact monitoring in the EIA process of South Australia

This paper presents the results of a detailed study of environmental impact monitoring (EIM) in South Australia by first establishing a context for EIM in the form of a literature review, and by then conducting a detailed content and practice analysis on EIA documents and on actual monitoring in practice. EIM in practice for specific projects was found to not correspond with either EIM proposals in the corresponding environmental impact statement, or EIM recommendations in the governmentʹs assessment report. EIM programmes appeared to be carried out at the discretion of the proponent, and no projects were found to have environmental impact monitoring that directly corresponded to either proposals in the EIS or recommendations in the assessment report. Reasons for this lack of correlation have been postulated to be a combination of a serious lack of the following factors: clearly assigned monitoring responsibilities, public accountability, clearly outlined monitoring timeframes, clearly outlined aims and objectives, lack of human resources, and lack of any EIM legislation. It should be noted that the study, upon which this paper is predominantly based, was undertaken in 1998. This study looked at developments that were approved (and subsequently built) under the Planning Act 1982. This Act was later replaced by the South Australian Development Act 1993. Relevant information from this study that has been reproduced in this paper was accurate at that time.