Page 860 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 April 2014
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Following self-government, the ACT did regulate the site, initially under the Water Pollution Act, which was administered by the then ACT Pollution Control Authority. In line with contemporary environmental practice at the time, groundwater monitoring was instigated by the ACT government as a condition of regulation following the introduction of the Environment Protection Act in 1997 and the creation of the EPA.
The Koppers site was required, through the conditions of its ACT licence, to manage all surface water within the site to ensure there were no unlawful discharges. Controlled discharges from the site were not permitted without Koppers first sampling the discharge water and obtaining the approval of the EPA. It is worth highlighting to members that during the entire period of the ACT’s licensing of the site there were no approved discharges from the site.
Test results received by the government until the plant closed in 2005 indicated that there were no impacts of concern in the surface water dams used to manage water within the site, soils where treated logs were stored or groundwater at the two licensed bores at the down-gradient boundary of the site.
It is the case, Mr Assistant Speaker, that there were lapses in the information supplied to the EPA by Koppers but this did not fundamentally change the fact that there were no significant issues arising from the monitoring of the facilities operation as assessed by the EPA.
The provision of monitoring information was highlighted as an enforcement issue requiring attention by the EPA. As the act was then structured, the EPA was limited in the compliance action it could take. This is in 2005. The EPA needed to demonstrate that environmental harm had been caused by the noncompliance due to the failure to provide reports by Koppers and that any noncompliance needed to be undertaken through a prosecution in the courts.
The EPA recognised that this was a restriction on its enforcement capacity and in 2005 it introduced a strict liability offence for breaches of conditions of an environmental authorisation. This provided the EPA with an appropriate tool—that is, a fine—to deal with matters such as those that had occurred during the regulation of the Koppers facility and the failure of Koppers to provide regular reports.
Since its introduction in 2005 this has been an effective enforcement mechanism for the EPA and has also been used to educate activity managers. The penalties available now range from $1,000 for an individual to $5,000 for a corporation and have proven sufficient to provide an incentive for compliance.
The EPA regulates in excess of 286 environmental authorisations. Since 2005 this mechanism has proved effective in ensuring compliance. The proposed amendments to the act, which are currently being considered by the government as a whole, will further improve the EPA’s abilities in this regard, especially in relation to the current issue pertaining to the need to demonstrate the occurrence of actual environmental harm before action can be taken. This again is worth highlighting in relation to this site.
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