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Water Impact Assessment

A water impact assessment looks to safe guard perhaps the most important resource in the world, with only 1% percent of all fresh water on the planet being in a drinkable form, and most of that being under ground. With drought and flooding becoming wide spread even in the UK water impact assessment is an important and wide reaching aspect of EIA.

Water is such an intrinsic part of the environment that the water assessment component of the EIA will likely influence other components such as visual impact, soils and geomorphology.

Flood Risk will be considered in the scope of a typical EIA water impact assessment. Water Impact is assessed on the basis of its quantity, its quality and its stake holders. Assessing impact of water quantity will involve looking at the project as part of the local water cycle, how will the development add or subtract from that equation. Inputs such as rainfall, and inflow will be considered, and losses from evaporation and runoff will be studied to create a water balance for the study area. Elements taken in to account in the Water Impact component of environmental impact assessment are: -Infiltration -Groundwater -Surface Waters -Floodplain

Water quality impact id also assessed, and will include benchmarking of current levels of determinants and the developments likely impacts of these levels in relation to current local EQS.

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