The full chain of environmental impact assessment — from screening to the control of the conditions of the environmental decision — is established by the Environmental Assessment Code. This page describes the whole path: how the subjection of a project is determined, what scoping and the report are, what the decision contains, and what happens when its conditions are breached.
Subjection and Screening
Assessment covers the activity of Annex I of the Code and that activity of Annex II which, on the basis of a screening decision, becomes subject to assessment. Screening for an Annex II activity is carried out before the assessment: the person carrying out the activity is obliged, at an early stage, to submit a screening application and to receive from the Agency a decision on whether the planned activity is subject to assessment. The application contains a brief description of the activity, its characteristics and the place of its implementation with geospatial coordinates.
The main stages of the assessment are the scoping procedure, the preparation of the report, the participation of society, the evaluation of the information, the expertise and, where necessary, the transboundary procedure; after the completion of these stages, an environmental decision is issued. Such an activity may be carried out only after the adoption of the decision.
Scoping and the Report
An application for a scoping conclusion and a scoping report are submitted to the Agency at an early stage of planning. Within 5 days of the registration of the application, the Agency publishes it, with the attached documents, on the information board of the municipality and on the environmental portal; in an accelerated proceeding — within 1 day. The formal verification of the documentation takes place within 5 days, and by the accelerated procedure — within 3 days.
After the approval of the scoping conclusion, the report is prepared by the person carrying out the activity or a consultant at its own expense; the report is signed by the preparers and is public. Then an application for an environmental decision is submitted to the Agency, accompanied by the report, the draft calculations of emission and discharge norms, where necessary a request for the classification of information, and a document confirming payment of the fee.