Should economic factors “make” or “break” the approval for a project?

By Hope-Elena Sardella, May, 2019

Recently, I have been challenged with a very personal question: Should economic factors “make” or “break” the approval for a project?

My answer is that economic factors can prevent the support for a project, not that it should. I find this a very personal question because it requires us as environmental studies to be morally and fundamentally challenged with our own beliefs. I specifically say that this is a personal question because I am human; and if all of the oil fields were shut down tomorrow from some event our economy would be devastated, my neighbors and my neighbor’s neighbors would be affected. One recent example we can look at is the current changes in Colorado in regards to new public health and safety regulations affecting the Oil industries ability to receive permits to drill. In the Weld County, Colorado where ninety percent of the oil is drilled; the town is divided between people who rely on oil and gas to sustain their income, and the citizens whom are outraged that oil wells are being drilled not but feet away from their homes and their children’s playgrounds (National Public Radio, 2019). From a bystander perspective, I understand both sides, but I would like to keep in mind that Colorado has a standard to set in progressive environmental reforms.

     In light of these ideas, when conducting an EIS, the environment of the human populations in the area affected must be taken into serious consideration. Author Marriott (1997) states that when administering an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), there must be a review of the following factors (if they pertain): “employment and income; land-values; taxes; revenues; and expenditures; economic viability of the existing business community; and proposed economic development plans and projects” (pg. 87, para. 2). In orders to accumulate the data necessary of employment demographics, the use of government sites such as The U.S Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Economics, as well as the U.S Census make for pertinent sources of data for of labor force totals, sectors of labor, annual earnings of labor divisions, forecasts of future employability/ and unemployment in the immediate area; which is input into the Affected Environment of an EIS (Marriott. 1997, pg. 87, para. 3). Furthermore, the direct impacts in the stages of construction can be short-term, but long term effects of development can be seen through the development of large corporations that would employ people for an extended length of time. One can discover the direct construction effects by determining the expenditure of construction, distance in a time of events, to the jobs developed for the construction; using multiplication and coefficients specific for industry standards in the area in question (Marriott. 1997, pg. 90, para. 2). Taking into consideration the employment of a populous in a given region is extremely important because it can be a catalyst for social upheaval in a community. Any given society needs to be afforded the right to transition and be prepared for life-altering changes – such as the removal of a specific set job in an entire community.

References

Colorado’s Oil And Gas Regulators Must Now Consider Public Health And Saftey. (2019). National Public Radio. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=712877704 (Links to an external site.)

Marriott, B. (1997). Environmental impact assessment: A practical guide. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.