Heritage Cases

ACED Renewables Hidden Valley (Pty) Ltd was granted an Environmental Authorisation (EA) (DEA Ref. no: 12/12/20/2370/1) for the proposed 140 MW Karusa Wind Energy Facility (Phase 1) on the farm De Hoop 202; the farm Standvastigheid 210; portions 3 and the remainder of the farm Rheebokke Fontein 209 within the Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality, Northern Cape on the 12th of August 2014 from the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA). ACED Renewables Hidden Valley (Pty) Ltd appointed Environmental Impact Management Services (Pty) Ltd (EIMS) to conduct an external audit of the Environmental Authorization and accompanying Environmental Management Programme (EMPr), in compliance with section 54A (3) of the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Regulations, 2014 (as amended) which states: “Where an environmental authorisation issued in terms of the ECA regulations or the previous NEMA regulations is still in effect by 8 December 2014, the EMPr associated with such environmental authorisation is subject to the requirements contained in Part 3 of Chapter 5 of these Regulations and the first environmental audit report must be submitted to the competent authority no later than 7 December 2019 and at least every 5 years thereafter for the period during which such environmental authorisation is still in effect.” Additional to the EIA regulation requirements, scheduled Environmental Compliance Audits are required to be undertaken in terms of Regulation 34 of the National Environmental Management Act, Act 107 of 1998 (NEMA) Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Regulations, 2014. Regulation 34 states: 1) “The holder of an environmental authorisation must, for the period during which the environmental authorisation and EMPr, and where applicable the closure plan, remain valid- (a) Ensure that the compliance with the conditions of the environmental authorisation and the EMPr, and where applicable the closure plan, is audited; and (b) Submit an environmental audit report to the relevant competent authority. 2) The environmental audit report contemplated in sub-regulation (1) must- (a) be prepared by an independent person with the relevant environmental auditing expertise; (b) provide verifiable findings, in a structured and systematic manner, on i) The level of performance against and compliance of an organisation or project with the provisions of the requisite environmental authorisation or EMPr and, where applicable, the closure plan; and ii) The ability of the measures contained in the EMPr, and where applicable the closure plan, to sufficiently provide for the avoidance, management and mitigation of environmental impacts associated with the undertaking of the activity; (c) Contain the information set out in Appendix 7; and (d) Be conducted and submitted to the competent authority at intervals as indicated in the environmental authorisation”. This Audit represents the Environmental Compliance Audit of the EA and Environmental Management Programme (EMPr) for the year 2019 in line with the requirements of NEMA. The scope of the audit is to assess compliance with the conditions of the EA and EMPr as well as to confirm the continued adequacy of the EMPr. The purpose of the audit is to ensure compliance with the requirements of the EA and EMPr. The objectives of the audit are to determine: • The level of performance against, and compliance of the organisation or project with, the provisions of the EA and EMPr; and • The ability of the measures contained in the EMPr, to sufficiently provide for the avoidance, management and mitigation of environmental impacts associated with the undertaking of the activity. 1321 EA and EMPr Audit 4 An audit checklist was prepared to evaluate the compliance with each condition contained in the EA and EMPr. Following the initial checklist preparation, a site visit was undertaken on the 25th of November 2019. The findings of this audit are based on visual inspection of certain construction areas, interviews, as well as documentation reviewed. Compliance with the requirements of the EA and EMPr was evaluated using pre-determined scoring criteria as described in Section 4.2. The results of the evaluation are provided in Section 5.2 and the findings are described in Section 5.3. Each condition in the EA and EMPr was weighted equally in order to determine a compliance score. Utilising this scoring system, a compliance score of 87,65% was obtained for EA and 91,24% obtained for the EMPr during this audit.