Cumulative Environmental Effects Assessment of Nazar Abad County's Industrial Estates - Iran

Cumulative effects assessment of development on environment studies the kind of impacts of projects that were ignored in environmental assessment directly. CEA, as an act, is a method to distinguish this point. Although some separate actions may individually do not have a significant impact, but when they are combined the impacts may be significant. Industrial estate of Sepehr is located in geographical position of 50° 35' eastern longitude and 35° 58' northern latitude of Nazar Abad County. Close to this industrial estate, there is industrial estate of Nazar Abad, which is under construction. The area of this industrial estate is 194 hectares. At first environmental conditions of Nazar Abad County and in possible cases the locations of industrial estates were described. Then prediction and assessment of impacts which accrued from construction and operation of industrial estates on surrounded environment to borderlines of pointed County were investigated. For cumulative environmental effects assessment the Monavari Method (2001) was used and 2 alternatives, "No action alternative" and "with project alternative" were considered. In "No action alternative", just environmental impacts which occurred by development activities with assumption of not implementing Nazar Abad industrial estate project and in "with project alternative" cumulative impacts which were accrued by activities of Nazar Abad and Sepehr industrial estate projects were investigated. Result of weighting indicated that "No action alternative", 139 positive impacts and 120 negative impacts and in "with project option" 216 positive impacts and 143 negative impacts will affect the environment. In "No action alternative", algebraic summation of averages score impacts in construction and operational phases were -1.78 and in "with action alternative" average score impacts +2.04 were achieved. "With action alternative" in the proposal site was considered as the best alternative, but project implementation is upon a condition that obeys the proposals for decreasing the negative environmental effects seriously and impacts and implements the management programs, monitoring and environmental education.