Environmental assessment for the Gaza industrial estate project

Following an introduction, Chapter 2 describes the legal, regulatory, and institutional framework associated with the project, including the roles and relationships of the various agencies within the newly formed Palestinian Authority (PA). Chapter 3 describes the proposed project, including the site location and the off-site infrastructure to support the GIE"s tenants (i.e., roads, systems to manage water, waste, and wastewater, and telecommunications and electrical infrastructure). The existing environment -- regionally and at the site -- is described in Chapter 4. The following environmental areas are included: climate, ecology, land use, air quality, noise, energy supplies, hydrology and water availability, water quality, solid and hazardous waste management, archaeological and historical resources, and socioeconomic conditions. Chapter 5, the core of the analysis, describes how these environmental areas and the environmental issues raised during the scoping process would be affected by the proposed project as well as by alternative scenarios. Means of mitigating the impacts of each are suggested. Chapter 6 contains conclusions and recommendations for both the GIE as a whole and for the various off-site infrastructure elements. With one possible exception, none of the alternative measures is clearly superior to the proposed project from an environmental point of view. Includes references.