Environmental Assessment
Volume E-5.3
Tailings Facility
Land Use
Ambatovy Project
208
January 2006
5.3.4
Issue Scoping
Key issues raised by the public relating to land use during public consultations
include:
•
elimination of good agricultural lands;
•
compensation for both landowners and land users without title;
•
toxicity of the content of the tailings pond to people and livestock;
•
downstream water quality and sedimentation effects, affecting water use
and agriculture;
•
changes to hydrology (water volumes, especially in rice growing areas);
and
•
the question whether reclaimed lands will be usable in the future.
Relocation planning is an important issue in relation to land use which is
addressed in a separate document from the EA.
5.3.5
Assessment Methods
Land use changes are considered through a spatial analysis of the kinds of land
use areas that will be altered by the project. Water volume changes are
considered through an analysis of availability of water compared with water
needs for agriculture, as described below. The effects of land use impacts are
social in nature and are addressed within the impact rating system in the
socioeconomics section (Volume E, Section 5.1).
The water needs were calculated for areas (both affected and non affected)
downstream from tailings facility, based on the known areas of rice paddies in
the LSA and downstream watersheds. The analysis assumed rice to be the main
crop requiring water, and used rice areas to perform the calculations of water
requirements, but an additional percentage of requirement was added on top of
the rice needs to account for other kinds of agriculture.
The calculation of water needs was performed with the software CROPWAT
developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO). It takes into account rainfall, rice evapotranspiration and soil percolation
losses. It does not take into account water flow from upstream. Evaporation was
calculated based on Penman-Monteith method.
