Page 861 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 April 2014
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Even with the failure to provide a report, there is still the requirement for the EPA to demonstrate actual environmental harm and take action in relation to such noncompliance. The change to provide for the potential for environmental harm, which the government is currently considering, will give the EPA much greater scope for action in this regard.
Proposals currently before the government to modernise the objects of the Environment Protection Act include broadening the definition of “environmental harm” to include “likely to cause harm to the environment” thus allowing the act to operate in a more proactive manner.
The proposals will additionally capture activities that contribute to gradual deterioration of the environment and allow the EPA to take appropriate regulatory action by providing an element that objectively assesses the seriousness of the offence. These changes will align our law with contemporary practice of other Australian jurisdictions and will put the ACT again at the forefront of environment protection law.
I will now turn briefly to the issues of contamination at the Koppers site itself and how these matters are regulated. Following the decommissioning of the Koppers site in 2005, detailed independent soil and groundwater assessments were undertaken. In relation to groundwater, in addition to the two off-site licensing wells, an additional 33 monitoring wells were installed.
The site was assessed, remediated and independently audited in accordance with the ACT EPA’s contaminated sites environment protection policy and the development conditions related to the redevelopment of the site. The contaminated sites policy was introduced with the contaminated land provision in the EPA act in 1999 and detailed the approach for managing contaminated land in the ACT.
The legislation introduced the use of independent EPA-approved auditors to provide a more robust and independent process for contaminated sites management. The law and its policies for managing contaminated sites in the ACT have been updated regularly in accordance with national and interstate policy development and are currently based on New South Wales law, which is also national and international best practice.
The use of accredited independent audits was first utilised by the ACT and Victoria in the 1980s and is now in place across Australia. The use of independent auditors is legislated in the EPA act with an approved auditor in the ACT being one that is accredited as an auditor in either New South Wales or Victoria. To maintain their accreditation, independent auditors are reviewed and audited by the relevant state EPA under a comprehensive accreditation scheme.
Furthermore, the ACT EPA also reviews all contaminated land audits undertaken in the ACT and participates in the state accreditation and review process for auditors. The use of the independent auditor process has proven to be robust and effective. It has been used in the ACT since the 1980s for both privately held sites and
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