Section 12

Public participation and Decision

Making (purpose and practices, public
participation and decision making)
 Public Participation in EIA
• EIA requires public participation from project
formulation to implementation activities. It reduces
the risks associated with the scientific uncertainty
involved in environmental decision making and to
increase transparency

Role of Public Participation

• Bridge conflicts and minimize misunderstanding
among stakeholders
• Promotes ownership and accountability of the
project
• Identifies risks and opportunities
• Strengthens the principles of sustainability and
decentralization
The involvement of the "public", or often referred to as
"stakeholders", is a vital component in successful EIA.
 Identification of stakeholders
• Stakeholders are part of the Civil Society. National
Commission on Sustainable Development (2002)
considers civil society to be women, janjatis, youth,
NGO, elected local body, trade unions, industry
and commerce, scientific and technological
community, and farmers (9 groups).

Stakeholders of an EIA process come from,

• Local people- individual or community likely to be
adversely or beneficially affected
• NGOs and CBOs working in the project area
• Interested public (particularly in case of nationally
significant projects)
• Competent authorities/decision making bodies
• Funding agencies
 Approaches to Public participation
• Stakeholder involvement plan: includes objectives of PP,
stakeholders-identification, timing and technique recognition
and budget allocation

• Collection of data and information: use of household

surveys, public hearings, interviews, establishment of
information centre (suitable for large scale projects) etc.

• Strategy adoption: use of appropriate tactics to dissipate and

acquire information to and from the stakeholders such as
through the use of user-friendly information sheets, charts,
posters

• Involvement of Groups or important people: such as

NGOs, User groups, volunteer organizations, religious/political
leaders, teachers etc
 Legal provisions to Public participation in EIA
process in Nepal
• Publication of a 15-day notice to the public in a national daily
newspaper: The public concerns are accommodated in the
Scoping document, and relevant concerns are reflected in
the TOR. The notice can also be posted in the public places
in the community
• Conduction of public hearing after the preparation of draft
EIA report: The concerns are included in the final EIA report
• Submission of the recommendation letters from the local
authority, such as VDCs, along with the EIA report : it gives
opportunity for peoples’ representative to rise their concerns
• Issuance of a 30-day notice for public review: Once the
MOST receives the final EIA report from the concerned
ministry, MOST issues a public notice to make the EIA report
available for public review.
 The stakeholders and their “nicknames”

• Proponents -------- The polluting agents

• Donors ----------- the Schizophrenic owners
• Negatively affected parties ----------- opponents
• Positively affected parties ----------- supporters
• Decision-makers ------------- Directors
• Laws (lawyers) & courts --------Formal guardians
• NGOs ----------- Informal guardians
• Consultants -------- The happiest folks
• Politicians ---------- The spoilers
 What is noise?
Noise is unwanted sound
• Unwanted by whom? “Whom” is people (human –
no one cares whether the rabbits living near
Heathrow are bothered by aircraft noise). People’s
tolerance thresholds to noise vary from individual to
individual, with time, location (country to country
etc…) Not easy to find a universal definition…
• What is sound?
• That’s a lot easier to define. Sound is air pressure
waves which human ears can detect.
• This is again a very human-centred definition (for
dogs the detection range is different).
• 1 Bar = 105 Pa at the surface
• 1 Pascal (Pa) is the IS unit for pressures. 1 Pa =1
Newton/m2
Noise levels.
• the sound pressures perceived by human range from 20
µPa to 200 Pa. This range is enormous. As the intensity is
proportional to the square of the pressure, its range of
variation is even greater. When a quantity varies over
several orders of magnitudes, it is usually more helpful to
look at its Logarithm and this is what people working with
noise do. A number of these logarithmic levels are used:
Intensity Level:
• LI=Log10(I/I0) (in Bell),
Where I0=10-12 W/m2 is a reference level which
roughly corresponds to the lower threshold of
hearing.

These levels are actually non-dimensional numbers

but they are commonly assigned a fictitious unit,
the ‘Bell’. Since most intensity levels are fairly small
numbers in Bells, one usually counts them in
decibels (dB) i.e. a tenth of a Bell. In decibel, the
intensity level is therefore:
LI=10*Log10(I/I0) (dB)
• Although intensity is physically the meaningful quantity (as an
indicator of the
• ‘strength’ of a sound), pressures are much easier to measure
experimentally using a simple microphone. Fortunately, it turns
out that the intensity is proportional to the square of the
pressure. So an alternative to LI is the Sound Pressure
Level LP :
Lp=10*Log10(p2/p0 2) = 20*Log10(p/p0) in dB,
• where p0= 20 µPa = 2*10-5 Pa is the reference pressure so that
Lp=0 at the standard threshold of hearing. The pressure p
used here is the root-mean square pressure which is more
representative than the maximum amplitude for complex non-
harmonic sounds. Due to the different reference chosen for
both levels, the numerical values of Lp and LI are different but
this difference is very small (0.5 dB) and usually ignored.
Effectively, they both represent the same thing – the strength
of the sound at a given instant in time and space.
• Both intensity and pressure define what is occurring
at a point in space. The more fundamental quantity
is the Sound Power Level of the source, Lw defined
by:
Lw= 10 Log (W/W0)
where W is the source power in watts and W0=10-12
Watts.
The resultant rms pressure is such that is such that
p2 = p2A + p2B. This is illustrated in the diagram shown in
Fig. 4.

The second pitfall is that the logarithm function is not linear:

Log(p2A + p2B) ≠ Log(p2A ) + Log( p2B) .
• Example: if source A produces a 50 dB
noise level at M on its own and if Source B
produces at M a 60 dB noise level on its
own, then the resultant noise when both
sources are working is not 110 dB
• To find the resultant dB level, we must work back to the
individual pressures produced by each source independently.

• For source A the corresponding pressure pA in Pascal is such

that LPA=10 log [p2A/(2*10-5) 2]=50. This gives a square pressure
p2A=4*10-5 Pa2.
• If source B produces a sound level LPB = 60dB at M on its own
then the corresponding square pressure p2B is pB=4*10-4 Pa2.
• The square rms pressure resulting from both sources is p2A +
p2B = 4.4 *10-4 Pa2
• which in dB means 10Log [4.4*10-4 / (210-5) 2] = 60.4 dB and
not 110 dB!
• Exercise: You live near Koteswor. You want
to work out the resultant noise level in your
living room when an aircraft flies by and
when your washing machine is in spinning
mode. The spin of your washing machine on
its own produces a 63 dB noise while at
worst an aircraft produces a 68 dB noise in
your living room. What is the resultant noise
level when you’re reading on your couch?
 Air Pollution

• Definition
• Sources
• Plume rises
• EPMs for the air pollution
A 3 m diameter stack emits 20g/sec SO2. The
physical height of the stack is 60 m and it has
20 m/sec exit velocity when the wind speed is
2 m/sec. What is the concentration of SO2 at
1Km downward. The value of 6y and 6z are 30
and 20 respectively. Assume Tatm=15 c,
T stack=100 c and atm. pressure is 1 atm.
• A cement factory burns 5 tons of coal per hour
and discharges the combustion products through
a stack that has effective height of 75 m. The
sulfur content of coal is 4.5%. The wind velocity at
the top of the stack is 6.0m/sec. The atmospheric
conditions are moderately to slightly stable.
Predict the impact on air environment at 860 m
downwind distance. The guideline states that if
the concentration of SO2 (sulfur dioxide) exceeds
300µg/m3 in the ambient environment it may
cause adverse impact on human health. Assume
standard deviation of horizontal and vertical plum
concentration at downwind distance of 860 m is
87 m and 52 m respectively.
• Calculate the nighttime concentration of
nitrogen oxides 1 km downward of an
open, burning dump if the dump emits
NOx at the rate of 4 g/sec. The wind
speed is 4 m/sec at 10 m above ground
level. The one-hour average diffusion
coefficients at 1 km are estimated as sy =
70 m and sz = 50 m and the dump is
assumed to be a point source.
 Solution
• Use Gaussian Model for ground level,
center-line concentration from a point
source at ground level.
• For the following data, find the maximum
ground level concentration at 4.2 km from the
following stack:
– Effective stack height = 75 m
– Emission rate = 2520 g/sec
– Wind speed at stack height = 6 m/sec
– y = 560 m
– z = 535 m