An Operations Environmental Management Plan (OEMP) provides specific guidance related to the operational activities associated with the facility. The roles and responsibilities for mitigation, monitoring and performance assessment during the facility operational life are also specified.
The OEMP should not become an additional requirement separate from the day-to-day activities of the site, to avoid it to be seen by operations staff as an obstruction to their normal duties and operations, hence it must be part of a facility’s routine operations and the environmental requirements should be integrated into existing procedures, rather than becoming a new layer of control.
In new operational facilities, the OEMP is usually prepared using the framework defined by the project EIA Study and/or the CTO. When an EIA Study is not available, the result from environmental assessments conducted during earlier stages of the project, as well as updated information on the project as per the detailed engineering design implemented, would be used as a starting point when preparing the OEMP.
For projects within existing operational areas, the proposed OEMP becomes a part of the existing facility’s OEMP.
Objective of Operations Environmental Management Plan
The key objectives of OEMP are summarised as follows:
- Compliance with environmental law and project commitments
- Avoidance, minimization and or mitigation of environmental impacts
- Facilitate the timely distribution of information and increase awareness
- Manage assets in accordance with design criteria
- Provide a guide to the management and notification of environmental incidents
- Effective response to community requests and complaints; and
- General improvements in environmental maintenance methods.
Components of the Operations Environmental Management Plan
Environmental concerns defining this OEMP are unique to the project’s operational phase. The OEMP will be prepared in an issues-based format that nominates for each environmental issue or impacting activity, the tasks that are required to be addressed during the operational phases of the development, covering
- Environmental issue
- Environmental objectives
- Environmental intent
- Control measures
- Responsibility
- Monitoring
- Reporting
- Performance Indicators
- Corrective Action