Environmental Impact Assessment

Planning and Construction

Planning and construction have a wide impact on the Company's activities for the entire "life cycle". Town plans setting rules for what is permissible on each parcel impose restrictions on land use also for environmental reasons, imposing necessary environmental preventive measures, and often require the purification of the land in order to change its designation. "Creeping" of "sensitive" land use in the vicinity of factories in the years after their establishment serves as grounds for the authorities to impose restrictions on the activities of those factories, and issue conditional and restrictive business licenses demanding the fulfillment of planning and construction regulations, adjusting the factory to the building permit and to the building program around it. In addition, any enlargement of the original factory requires modification or update of the construction program and is exposed to the objections of nearby residents. 

Planning and construction regulations require entrepreneurs, at the request of the committees, to submit environmental impact studies. These surveys are required to be detailed and are subject to review. Thus the issue of planning and construction constantly accompany the factory's activity, and determines, to a great extent, the rules of the game directing the activity. 

Three factors "participate" in the creation of a hazard: the creator of a nuisance, the beneficiary of a nuisance and the intermediate factors which link between them. We provide legal advice and representation regarding environmental interaction between industrial enterprises and their environment, identifying potential points of friction and putting together ways to avoid falling into future environmental statutory problems already in the stage of formulation of master plans.

While we are sensitive both to the time factor priority of enterprises and to the "creeping" of residence in its proximity which creates a hazard, we know that it is actually the plant which is required by the authorities to deal with the hazard. Another example of a significant environmental planning in which we are involved, is to determine the separation distances between plants handling dangerous materials and population centers. Quite often, factories and plants which were originally erected in a remote area and residential neighborhoods encroached it since, will have to deal with the demands of the residents and authorities to evacuate the site, or to equip themselves with modern and expensive protective shielding. 

Our office accompanies the construction of new plants and the expansion of existing plants, from the planning program, the environmental impact statement supporting it, and the design of the regulation provisions, through the debates in the planning institutions in relation to the plan and the objections to it, and on to formulating the conditions for the building permits and obtaining permits for natural gas use. As stated above, since the building permit is a precondition for any discussion on the business license, more often than not we were required to continue the legal support to the submission of an application for a business license and to the negotiations on the formation of additional conditions for the business license. We will do the same for you.