Page 2201 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 August 2014
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The EPA regulates in excess of 286 environmental authorisations, and since 2005 this mechanism has been effective. The proposed amendments to the act 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.
In respect of the amendments to the ACT’s Environment Protection Act, the proposals being considered by the government would modernise the objects of the act by broadening the definition “environmental harm” to include “likely to cause harm to the environment”, 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. The proposed changes would align our legislation with contemporary practices in other jurisdictions and would, again, place the ACT at the forefront of environment protection.
Turning to the issues of contamination at the Koppers site itself and how these matters are regulated in the ACT, following the decommissioning of the 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 state environment protection policy was introduced with the contaminated land provisions in the Environment Protection 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 legislation and policies for managing contaminated sites in the ACT have been updated regularly in accordance with national and interstate policy development and are based on the New South Wales legislation and 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 by the New South Wales or Victorian EPA. To maintain their accreditation in their respective states, 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 and has been used in the ACT since the 1980s, addressing both privately held and government sites, including the former sheep dip remediation program, the transfer of land from the commonwealth to the ACT and major brownfield developments such as the redevelopment of the Kingston foreshore.
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