Applied Ecosystem Services, LLC

The relationship between a company requiring environmental permits and environmental regulators is equivalent to that of a prospective house buyer and a real estate agent. Until the early 1990s all real estate agents and brokers were required by statute to represent only the seller’s interests; most still are. This means a buyer has to be aware of the agent’s agenda (get more money for the seller and his commission) and act to protect his interests.

Across the western US drought, wildland fires, cheatgrass, Western juniper, Lahontan cutthroat trout, bull trout, salmon, bald eagles, desert tortoise, and sage grouse all affect where and how natural resource companies operate. Project planning and approvals can be greatly facilitated by application of advanced statistical and spatial models to environmental data. Causal relationships between explanatory variables such as habitat, food, and predators to response variables (species numbers and distributions) are explained by linear regression models.

Most industrial operations discharge storm water into a receiving water body from a single point of discharge from the permitted area. The water leaving the site will have many chemical constituents, some of which are considered to be pollutants (or contaminants) by statute. States differ in their water quality standards, but all require permit compliance monitoring. How the reported results are analyzed can make a huge difference to the permit holder’s operations.

Every project in the mining and energy industries exists only as long as it has valid environmental permits. No project can begin, operate, expand, close, be reclaimed, or be decommissioned without required environmental permits. This makes environmental data—correctly analyzed, interpreted, and clearly communicated—as important as commodity prices or energy demand data to regulators, senior corporate executives, bankers, and equity investors. This is particularly true when commodity prices are in a trough and energy prices are in flux.

Regulators require collection and submission of baseline data prior to permit issuance (e.g., NEPA documents or other operating permits), and continuing data to evaluate compliance with permit conditions. The reason is the need to determine whether the proposed project might have unacceptable environmental impacts, and whether operations have such impacts. It is common for analyses accompanying reported data to be inappropriate or superficial and not answer two critical questions. Why do observations and measurements have the values they do?