Page 2200 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 August 2014
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The government is strongly committed to protecting our environment. The licensing of activities and remediation of sites which have the potential to cause harm to both human health and the environment is a key component of the ACT’s environment protection legislation. That legislation provides the framework for the protection of our environment from activities that have the potential to cause harm.
One of the key objectives of the legislation under the nationally recognised polluter-pays principle is that the assessment, including any testing and remediation of the site, is the responsibility of the polluter in the first instance, and the land owner in the second. The act requires that certain activities are subject to formal regulation or licensing by the EPA.
In relation to the regulation of the Koppers site, it was licensed by the commonwealth from 1983 when it commenced operations until the territory took responsibility for regulation in 1989 under the then commonwealth water pollution ordinance. Groundwater monitoring was not a requirement of the commonwealth’s licensing of the facility.
Following self-government, the ACT initially regulated the site under the Water Pollution Act 1984 which was administered by the then ACT Pollution Control Authority. In line with contemporary environmental practice at the time, groundwater monitoring was instigated as a condition of the ACT regulation of the site following the introduction of the Environment Protection Act 1997 and the creation of the EPA.
The Koppers site was required, through the conditions of the ACT licence, to manage all surface water within the site to ensure there were no unlawful discharges from the site. Controlled discharges from the site were not permitted without Koppers first sampling the discharge water and obtaining the approval of the EPA. During 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 there were no impacts of concern in the surface water dams used to manage water within the site, in soils where treated logs were stored or in groundwater at the two licensed bores at the down gradient boundary of the site.
While there were some lapses in the information supplied to the EPA following the plant’s closure, this did not fundamentally change the fact that there were no significant issues from the monitoring of the facility’s operation. The provision of monitoring information was highlighted as an enforcement issue requiring attention by the EPA. As the act was then structured, the EPA needed to demonstrate that environmental harm had been caused by the non-compliance and that this action would need to be pursued through the courts.
The EPA recognised that this was an enforcement restriction and in 2005 introduced a strict liability offence for breaches of conditions of an environmental authorisation. This provided the EPA with an appropriate tool to deal with matters such as those which had occurred during the regulation of the Koppers facility. It has proven a useful mechanism since its introduction and has been utilised to educate activity managers. The penalty ranges from $1,000 for an individual to $5,000 for a corporation and has proven to provide sufficient incentive to ensure compliance.
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