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Environmental forensics

The field of environmental forensics is an emerging discipline, and covers a wide range of environmental sciences. Expert specialises in forensic ecology - the examination of environmental accidents, especially (but not exclusively) affecting aquatic habitats. His work has covered a wide range of accidents, some of them substantial, and includes the investigation of oil-spills, river pollution incidents, fish kills, the assessment of the environmental benefits of salvage operations at sea, and the impacts of the contamination of public water supplies on the health of humans and livestock.

Following his post-graduate research in fish toxicology, Expert became involved in gathering evidence for prosecutions and claims for damages relating to the poaching of fish, accidental discharges of farm and industrial wastes to rivers, and the impacts of off-shore disasters such as the wreck of the oil tanker ‘Torry Canyon’ on marine resources and tourism in Cornish estuaries.

He has acted as an Environmental Mission and Team Leader for leading international Consultancies and Development Agencies on numerous engineering development projects overseas. In these, he is responsible for quality control of data collection and analysis, in disciplines ranging from archaeology to zoology. As the result of this work, he has developed techniques and protocols for evidence collection that have been applied to a wide range of incidents and situations around the world. They form the basis of his work as an Expert Witness in the application of forensic ecology to prosecutions, insurance and salvage claims, and the response and management of potentially fatal environmental incidents. As the result of his specialist knowledge he was invited to write the chapter on Environmental Forensics in the new John Wiley and Sons Encyclopaedia of Forensic Science. He was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Biology in December 2009 for his contributions to this branch of environmental forensics.

In the field of evidence salvage, Expert. Expert’s expertise has led to the successful presentation of evidence in criminal and civil courts in the UK, Ireland and Korea. His analyses have also been relied on by environmental auditing specialists in the assessment of claims made by salvors for marine casualty recovery operations around the world. His application of accident investigation techniques, including crime-scene and accident site photography, and historic evidence salvage, coupled with his knowledge of ecotoxicology, ecological dynamics and environmental modelling have provided evidence that has allowed courts to decide complex and long-delayed cases to his Clients’ benefit.

The investigation of the effects of accidental and deliberate contamination of public water supplies by toxic chemicals has placed Expert. Expert prominently as a scientist in the fields of aluminium ecotoxicology and water fluoridation. In the notorious 1988 Camelford water poisoning incident, the public water supplies in North Cornwall were accidentally contaminated with exceedingly high levels of aluminium sulphate. Expert. Expert’s independent salvage of critical evidence on the human and veterinary impacts of this incident has led to the discovery of a new links between aluminium and neurodegenerative diseases.

Environmental Impact Assessment

Expert. Expert has played a significant role in devising appropriate techniques for EIA activities that are now widely used by leading International Development Agencies in a wide range of fields, from hydropower development to road, rail and marine transport planning, in irrigation and drainage planning and management, for lood risk prediction, the tracing of the translocation of agricultural pesticides, and in municipal water abstraction, storage, treatment and waste disposal.

In the Indus Valley, his work as Environmental Team Leader for the Asian Development Bank-funded National Drainage Policy provided new methodologies for, amongst other actions, the protection of archaeological sites such as Mohenjo Daro, assessing the assimilative capacity of the irrigation drainage system to deal with municipal septic wastes, and the impact of irrigation abstraction on the dynamics of the country’s largest natural lake fishery, in Manchar Lake.

In the Mekong Basin he introduced the use of hydraulic modelling to identify the cumulative impacts of multiple hydropower schemes. His use of Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) to compare the relative technical, ecomonic, social and environmental impacts of each of the 37 proposed dams was widely praised by International Agencies, regional governments and local environmental protection staff in the three participating countries.

His prediction of serious seismic risks from the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a previously quiescent area, was first ignored, but subsequently vindicated when filling the main reservoir triggered a significant earthquake. His warning to World Bank of its impending corporate legal liability for failing to comply with its own policies led to its immediate withdrawal of finance for the grossly over-ambitious complex of projects.

Acting as Team and Mission Leader for International Development Agencies, Expert has advised on the methodology for, and provided training in, the practice of environmental assessment at Strategic, Sectoral, and Project levels. His had devised institutional capacity-building training courses for governments needing to meet the strict requirements of compliance with the aquis communitare for membership of the European Community.

He has assisted governments faced with legal challenges to the implementation of their own development projects. In Egypt, he resolved a problem caused by a preemptive land-grab by academics, who were attempting to sell public land on a governmental agricultural land project in Sinai to private farmers. Working for the European Community in Laos, he compiled the Country Environmental Profile that was used to redirect national policies of enforcement of environmental legislation, and formed the basis of the EC’s National Investment Policy for the Lao Government.

His expertise has been used by Donors to scrutinise investment policies with respect to national government objectives. In Mali he warned IFAD of a spurious attempt by the Malian government to obtain funding for Aquaculture development in the Sahel. In Tibet, highly damaging Chinese attempts to increase Chinese influence in Qinghai Prefecture were blocked by his advice to World Bank on the poor quality and safety standards used by Chinese dam-builders attempting to over-develop traditional sustainable agricultural practices.

Aquaculture and fisheries

Expert has extensive practical experience in aquaculture, and has designed, built and managed many recreational fisheries and fish farms. They include facilities for rearing trout, salmon, edible and ornamental carp, tilapia, and numerous African and Asian food fish. He established the Shetland mussel and salmon farming industries in the 1970s, and currently advises Ireland’s largest producer and exporter of shellfish. He also acts as a forensic expert for fish farming businesses, collecting and assessing evidence of causation in claims for damages by incidents such as oil-spills, river contamination and related pollution incidents.

As Deputy Fisheries Officer for the Cornwall River Authority he was responsible for the management of 2000 km of inland rivers, and restored the UK’s oldest trout hatchery to full operation. He established a regional salmon restocking programme in which 750,000 young fish were released to the rivers of Cornwall each year. When a new disease of salmon appeared in the UK in 1967, he established the first fish disease laboratory in the UK for identifying bacterial diseases of the Authority’s hatchery and river fish stocks, and developed the use of veterinary medicines to treat stocks against infectious conditions.

As Senior Consultant in Aquaculture for the leading London-based firm of Fisheries Development, Expert. Expert travelled extensively, advising Clients on the potential for developing commercial and community aquaculture projects around the world. Subsequently, as an independent Consultant he expanded his activities to cover the analysis of the effects of development projects on fisheries and aquaculture in both fresh and marine waters.

For some years he owned and managed the first ornamental carp and goldfish farm in the UK employing environmental and hormonal management to regulate broodstock spawning to produce ornamental fish to coincide with the spring peak market demand. He designed and managed the first eel farm in Europe (in Italy) to employ Far Eastern technology, geothermal heating and venturi aeration to rear eels intensively for the German and Dutch markets.

After twenty years working in this field Expert. Expert became increasingly involved in aquatic toxicology, and in the growing field of ecological and environmental assessment. His background in fish toxicology research at the UK’s former leading establishment, the Water Pollution Research Lab at Stevenage, was central to expanding his field of work to include the application of toxicology and pollution chemistry to fisheries and aquaculture problems at home and overseas.

Because of his unique background, Expert has been appointed as an Expert in a range of forensic investigations related to aquaculture and fisheries. He has worked with accredited forensic laboratories in the investigation of environmental pollution and disasters in rivers, lakes and the sea. He has been able to salvage critical evidence relevant to historic incidents, which has been effectively presented in Courts and Tribunals. He is an expert on the application of hydraulic modelling of river systems to the management of commercial river and lake fisheries and the protection of communities reliant on them.

Sakhalin II Oil and Gas Pipeline Development Project, Russia, 2002. Senior Environmental Consultant, AEA Technology plc.

Expert. Expert reviewed the compliance of the Infrastructure Upgrade Project with the environmental management protocols required by the Contractor (Shell and Sakhalin Oil Companies), the Russian Federation and the international lenders. His management review resolved a number of issues and allowed the Project’s environmental sub-contractors to complete their work without further delay. His recommendations for the future management of the project ‘environmental component provided a basis for the restructuring of the Russian Federation’s investment in the oilfield development.
Environmental Consultant and Expert Witness to the Lett Group, Wexford, Ireland, 2002 - present.

Expert. Expert was commissioned to investigate the impacts of a new fishing harbour and municipal sewerage treatment works on Lett and Co’s commercial mussel beds in Wexford Harbour. In his Expert Testimony to the Dublin High Court his detailed analysis of the damaging effects on the mussel stocks of the hydrodynamic changes in the river channel and the altered dissipation of municipal effluents in Wexford Harbour resulted in the award of a multi-million Euro settlement in favour of his Clients. Subsequently he has acted as permanent Environmental Consultant to Lett Group, and has provided Expert Witness evidence in a number of subsequent legal actions.
Mission Leader to Laos, for Agrifor Consultants, Belgium, 2005.

In this EU Framework mission, the EU required the preparation of a detailed Country Environmental Profile for Laos, to prepare the EU’s next 5-year investment programme for the country. Leading the Mission, Expert. Expert used his experience in the Mekong Basin to identify key environmental and social constraints on future development, and recommended the priorities for targeted investment to stimulate the economy. He advised that the central management objective in strategic planning should be a more intensive approach to the monitoring of compliance and far more robust enforcement of environmental legislation. His highly sensitive and confidential report was acknowledged by the EC Help Desk as 'the highest quality document to have passed across this Desk.'
Senior Environmental Consultant, Se San, Se Kong and Nam Theun Basin Hydropower Study, for Halcrow Rural Management. 1997-9

Expert. Expert managed the Halcrow environmental team, national Environment Staff and ex-patriot experts in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, in a regional collaboration and field studies on 37 hydropower projects in the Middle and Lower Mekong River Basin. He also prepared and presented Training Workshops on methodology and capacity strengthening for the Environmental Departments in each country. His development of new procedures for predicting basin-wide cumulative impacts led World Bank's Chief Environmental Adviser Dr. R Goodland, to comment that, “ Expert finds problems that no one else even knows exist – but then he finds solutions!”Fruit Fly Mission Leader, Carambola Fruit Fly Eradication Project, International Food and Agriculture Development Agency, Rome, 1997

The eradication of an introduced Fruit Fly pest that threatened to block exports of fruit from South America to the EC and USA was stalled when the problems of running the project under six incompatible legal codes appeared to be insuperable. Expert. Expert provided an Expert Opinion on the toxicology of an essential pesticide, after an earlier assessment had been rejected by the Donor. He then restarted the Project by clearing the legal minefield under which the project had attempted to operate, and redirecting the management of the programme of containment and eradication to comply with the clarified legislative framework. The Project then moved to a successful completion.