Page 5646 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 November 2010
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That this bill be agreed to in principle.
This bill amends the Planning and Development Act. The bill is about environmental impact statements required for development applications in the impact track assessment under the act and the circumstances in which various factors can trigger an EIS. A draft preliminary version of this bill was publicly released as an exposure draft for a period closing on 17 September this year. Comments were received from several community environmental groups, including the conservation council and the Environmental Defender’s Office.
Before I turn to the specific content of the bill, I would first like to outline the background and reasons for this bill. A key aspect of the planning system reforms introduced by the Planning and Development Act in 2007 was a clear intent that the level and nature of assessment of development applications should be proportionate to the scale, complexity and likely impacts of the proposed development.
For this reason, the new act implemented a multi-tier assessment system involving:
exempt development—for projects that do not require approval under the planning legislation;
code track—for the assessment of relatively simple, low impact projects;
merit track—for the assessment of more complex, significant matters;
impact track—for the assessment of projects likely to have a major environmental impact which includes development listed in schedule 4 of the act; and
prohibited development—projects which cannot proceed and cannot be the subject of a development application.
This assessment system has worked well to date. However, experience since the commencement of the act has shown that there is scope for fine tuning what falls into the impact track and therefore requires an EIS. In particular, the list of development identified in schedule 4 of the act as impact track assessable is, in a number of instances, either set at too broad a level or the wording is not sufficiently precise. As a result, schedule 4 is at risk of catching projects that do not warrant assessment in this high end assessment track.
In particular, some straightforward works associated with normal land development have been subjected to sometimes unnecessary assessment. This has included some proposals that have already undergone assessment and statutory consideration under the territory plan.
I can give the Assembly a clear example of where the wording of the schedule needs to be fixed. In its current form, schedule 4 has been interpreted as triggering an EIS if a sewer pipe is to be constructed within 100 metres of “a body of water—whether artificial or natural”. This would include stormwater drains and depressions that only carry water during heavy rainstorms, as well as our system of urban ponds which, as members know, are also stormwater detention basins.
Taken literally, almost all new houses, and certainly every new housing estate, would require an EIS for routine but essential infrastructure. It is clear in this case that the
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