EHPLE Environmental Health cheat sheet

Environmental Planning

• Environmental planning links land-use decisions to environmental outcomes: zoning, siting, and infrastructure choices determine exposure patterns before any single source is regulated.

• The planning cycle: inventory and baseline data → goal and objective setting → analysis and forecasting → plan formulation → adoption → implementation → monitoring and feedback.

• Screening separates actions needing full environmental review from those with negligible effects; scoping then sets the issues, boundaries, and alternatives to be analyzed in detail.

• Impact assessment follows source–pathway–receptor logic: identify the release, the transport medium (air, water, soil, groundwater), and the exposed population or ecosystem.

• Alternatives analysis is the core of environmental impact assessment; the no-action alternative is the baseline against which every other option is compared.

• Carrying capacity defines the population or development level an area can sustain without irreversible degradation of its resource base; exceeding it produces cumulative stress.

• Cumulative effects are the incremental impacts of an action added to past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions; they are assessed at a regional, not project, scale.

• Mitigation hierarchy: avoid the impact first, then minimize, then restore or rehabilitate, and offset only residual impacts that cannot be otherwise addressed.

• Land-use compatibility rules: separate sensitive receptors (schools, hospitals, residences) from industrial and traffic sources using buffer distances, transitional zoning, and performance standards.