Quick Scan (Review) of the ESIA Report on Drinking Water Supply Bujumbura, Burundi

The Facility for Infrastructure Development (ORIO) requested the Netherlands Commission for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) to perform a quick scan of the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) report on the provision of better access to the drinking water supply for the city of Bujumbura, Burundi. The project includes the extension of the current water supply system with a new raw water intake at Lake Tanganyika, a drinking water treatment plant and the extension of the transmission and distribution network, and is expected to deliver an extra 42,000 m3 per day. The aim of this quick review was quality assurance.

Significant details

The NCEA checked whether the ESIA was in line with the national regulations and verified whether the ESIA report contained adequate, accurate and sufficient information needed for decision making. The NCEA observed that the ESIA report was not in line with Burundi’s procedures for scoping for ESIA. NCEA therefore advised to restructure the ESIA including the following recommendations:

• exclude irrelevant information, while including information necessary to get a full picture of the project, its impacts and alternatives. In other words: more compact, yet more to the point and more focused on decision making for this specific project at this site, under these specific circumstances;
• include an Environmental and Social Management Plan and Resettlement Action Plan as part of the ESIA report, in line with Burundi’s regulations;
• improve options for verification of information by providing references, quantitative data and insight in methods used for calculations/estimates.

Advisory reports and other documents

25 Sep 2014: Memorandum