The EU Environmental Liabilities Directive (ELD) was implemented into UK law in 2009 and seeks to discourage the causing of environmental damage by applying stringent, and potentially costly, remedial measures to address such damage.

Guidance on establishing a species and habitats baseline for the Environmental Damage/Liability Regulations 2009, is new guidance commissioned by the Energy Institute (EI)’s Soil Waste and Groundwater Group and developed by ENVIRON. This publication is now available and provides guidance on establishing a species and habitat baseline to assist environmental managers of petroleum manufacturing, bulk storage facilities and other facilities in related process industry sectors, such as chemicals and petrochemicals, to comply with the ELD, with a particular focus on protected species and conserved habitats.

The guidance is in two parts: an introduction to the main concepts of the ELD and the enabling UK national regulations; and a detailed guide to establishing a species and habitats baseline, which provides a systematic process to prioritising sites and gathering appropriate data linked to the potential for damage to occur.

The EI guidance has been designed as a practical handbook, enabling users to develop a species and habitats baseline, for areas on and around their facilities, helping to direct appropriate damage prevention efforts and to build reference information, against which any potential damage can be measured. While the guide is likely to be most useful to manufacturing and storage sites, the principles and guidance are equally applicable to smaller sites with areas of interest being scaled accordingly. Over time, the guidance will enable a ‘living baseline’ to be established, where natural variations in key species and habitats local to the site will be better understood.

The EI’s Introductory guide to environmental damage, published in 2009, provides an introduction only whereas this full guidance includes supplementary information on exemptions, exclusions and further details of the regulations.

Martyn Lambson, Chair, EI Soil Waste and Groundwater Working Group, says, ‘This guide is essential reading for anyone who has a responsibility for environmental management across the energy industry. It presents a step-by-step process to establishing a baseline using in-company, public and commercial information sources, and field-based surveys when needed. Guidance is given on what to measure and how often, with criteria for judging reasonable costs. Many of the techniques described are relatively simple and low cost. The baseline information can inform compliance requirements and provide some assurance, both to the operator and local communities, without which the impact of the site may be open to conjecture and false perception.’

Samantha Deacon, Senior Consultant, ENVIRON, says, ‘The baseline condition is an operator’s insurance policy against over or under-compensatory remedial action in the event of an incident. Its benefits are threefold; to direct preventative efforts that are most effective before an incident occurs, to use knowledge of species and habitats to reduce damage during an incident, and to enable accurate remediation assessments following an incident. Without evidence to the contrary from baseline work, regulators could apply tougher remediation actions on the assumption of a more pristine pre-damage condition than is actually the case.’

Tags: The Energy Institute