Federal Act
on the Protection of the Environment
(Environmental Protection Act, EPA)

¹ Any per­son who wishes to plan, con­struct or modi­fy an in­stall­a­tion that is sub­ject to an en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact as­sess­ment must sub­mit an en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact re­port to the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity. This forms the basis for the en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact as­sess­ment.

² The re­port con­tains all the in­form­a­tion re­quired to as­sess the pro­ject in ac­cord­ance with the en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions. It is drawn up in ac­cord­ance with the guidelines is­sued by the en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion agen­cies and in­cludes the fol­low­ing:

a.

the ex­ist­ing con­di­tion;

b.²⁵

the pro­ject, in­clud­ing pro­posed meas­ures for the pro­tec­tion of the en­vir­on­ment and in the event of dis­aster, and an out­line of the main al­tern­at­ives, if need be stud­ied by the ap­plic­ant;

c.

the fore­see­able re­sid­ual en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact.

³ In or­der to pre­pare for the re­port, a pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tion is car­ried out. If the pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tion con­clus­ively as­cer­tains the ef­fects on the en­vir­on­ment and the en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion meas­ures re­quired, the res­ults of the pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tion are deemed to be the re­port.

⁴ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity may re­quest in­form­a­tion or fur­ther cla­ri­fic­a­tion. It may call for ex­pert re­ports; be­fore do­ing so, the au­thor­ity must al­low in­ter­ested parties the op­por­tun­ity to state their opin­ions.