Page 864 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 April 2014
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Initially the facility was guided in its operation by the crown lease, from 1989. After that, after self-government, there were two environmental authorisations put in place by the ACT authorities: firstly, a three-year agreement with Environment ACT in 1998, and then an ongoing authorisation from the Environment Protection Authority in 2002. All of these agreements required reporting from Koppers in regard to the levels of chemicals on site.
The agreements became more sophisticated over time, but they generally included water and soil sampling. Water sampling involved both sampling the bores on site and also the retention dams. There were requirements that Koppers should report either quarterly, or every four months in the earlier agreement. Unfortunately, the history of this company in fulfilling its requirements under the authorisations granted to it by the relevant authority was pretty appalling.
They failed to meet their reporting requirements repeatedly and, in fact, only submitted six reports on testing between 1998 and 2002, when there should have been reports every four months. Only two samples appear to have been recorded between 2002 and 2005, when there should have been quarterly reports. Indeed, some of the reporting indicates that there were occasions on which the required levels set for the company under the authorisations were breached. They were not necessarily large breaches, but they are indications that the levels set had been exceeded on several occasions.
Also of note is that under the final period of authorisation that was granted by the Environment Protection Authority in 2002, a review of the agreement between the EPA and Koppers was supposed to occur annually. Indeed, the front cover of the agreement states that this should happen, as was required under the legislation at the time, but this did not happen. In fact, the EPA only reviewed the agreement once and that was for the period 2004-05, more than two years into the agreement.
The review found that, while there were no incidents of environmental harm reported, the company had breached its compliance. It raises the question about how anyone would have known about any actual incidences given that the company’s reporting record was so poor. The audit also found that there were no records of quarterly monitoring being undertaken, that the general manager advised that there were records but did not know where they were, and that the company had been storing treated logs in a location that they should not have been. These sorts of things really should have been ringing alarm bells.
The audit also found that there had been no discharges during the review period. Indeed, Koppers never notified of a discharge, and yet anecdotal evidence from a number of people indicates that it is likely that there were some discharges from the site, even if only during rain events. By 2005, however, Koppers had indicated to the EPA that they were winding up their operations at Hume and the response of the EPA continued to be muted.
The question for policymakers, as we now stand here, is why this happened. Did the EPA not have the legislative mechanisms it required to elevate its concerns to the
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