Second opinion NuStar terminal expansion

Abstract

In this report a second opinion is developed for the Environmental Impact Assessment NuStar terminal expansion (at St. Eustatius). Only the marine ecology part of the EIA report is evaluated focusing on the impacts reported for marine reserves, reef- and sea-grass habitat, conchs, turtles, marine mammal and fish. The criteria used are: completeness, consistence, transparency, ecological soundness, and relevance of the foreseen impacts resulting from the terminal expansion. When applying these criteria we have found that most of the impact assessments were incomplete (missing information and data, missing expected impacts). Reference base line data has been incompletely collected. Furthermore, many of the assessments were not transparent (based on the information given in the EIA we could not come to the same conclusion). Also we found that the reasoning to come to a conclusion in the EIA was not ecologically sound in many cases (e.g. mobile species are not affected by habitat loss because they can move out the area instead of describing an effect on the distribution area and thus on the abundance or density of the species). In a few cases assessments scored not relevant or were not assessed in a consistent way. Furthermore, we found that not all expected (potential) impacts were assessed and that those assessed were mainly qualitatively assessed only. Data on pressures was incomplete as was data on ecological receptors, and some publically available data was not used. At the end of this report we list these data needs and missing impact assessments