The City Took Seven Years to Grant a Certificate of Environmental Aptitude
<p style="line-height: 20.8px;"><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">For the development of its activity, many institutions are required to assess the consequences that can generate their work on the environment and, in return, the Environmental Protection Agency gives them a certificate. However, the city audit found "dispersion" of the document delivery and delays ranging between 3 and 89 months.</span></p>
A report of the Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA) detected "dispersion" in processing times of Environmental Aptitude Certificates (CAA) with cases delayed up to 89 months.
The Directorate General of Technical Evaluation of the Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for assessing the environmental impact of the different institutions generate with the development of its activity and issue, where applicable, certification.
However, not only were there cases of excessive wait but the timing was very wide. If the certification process is made through electronic records "the average since the request was made until the CAA was issued was 6.7 months with a maximum of 13 and a minimum of three." For those who managed the paper Aptitude "the longest term was 86 months and the lowest two months."
As manifested by the Directorate "between 80% and 90% of CAA ordering procedures are via web."
The Law on Environmental Impact Assessment categorizes companies according to the environmental consequences it generates. For this report, the city audit focused on records related to "Subject to Categorization" activities, which are awaiting an administrative technical procedure for categorizing and those that are explicitly categorized as "With significant effect".
The latter, according to Law 12,339, relate to management firms highways, subway lines or rail, supermarkets or superstores, central electricity production, the relevant infrastructure, to name a few.
In relation to records, the AGCBA reported that "the Department does not have a system or computer database where it logs management Certificates". In fact, it adds that "in doing so manually is not possible to obtain data and indicators", such as the number of requests entered in a period.
The report, which evaluated 2014 and was approved last year, cites previous work of the audit related to the issuance of Certificates of Aptitude Ambienta. One of 2010 emphasizes the delay to resolve each case, which generated that "the environmental impact assessments lose substance." Another document, approved in November 2011, found "serious weaknesses in regard to the integrity, security and information transparency" with consequences for the "clear and safe" access to data.
Finally, a report of the Audit Unit who recommended in November 2014 "to generate a unified database of all activities, projects, programs and activities achieved by environmental laws to be improved also recalls the processing times of the CAA. "
It is important to remember that the Internal Audit is an independent evaluation process within an organization to improve procedures, accounting, performance standards, financial reporting and other issues.