I have often been asked: “What happens when an industry breaches its environmental licence?” and “Does industry just get away with it?”

Regardless of industry’s significant investment and its efforts to minimize environmental impacts, at times GILG members have not complied with laws that help protect the environment and the community.

As part of our commitment to increase our transparency, Gladstone Industry Leadership Group (GILG) members have decided to make the community more aware of these shortcomings and to summarize and explain this publicly available information.

In the past five years since January 2004, the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) has taken many enforcement actions to protect Gladstone’s environment.

Of these, DERM has taken 18 environmental enforcement actions against GILG members. The actions include three Penalty Infringement Notices, one Environmental Evaluation, 13 Transitional Environmental Programs and one Environmental Protection Order.

While these breaches have not resulted in court action, by law these actions must be noted in the annual reports of each GILG member.

A Penalty Infringement Notice (PIN) is levied if a breach has been committed that is not serious enough to warrant court action. According to the legislation, a PIN is appropriate if the breach:

• is minor;

• is a one-off situation easily remedied; and

• could have been prevented by normal operating procedures.

In the case of GILG members, two PINs have been issued for water discharge breaches with a third PIN for an air emission breach.

An Environmental Evaluation (EE) is issued when DERM is “satisfied that there has been a contravention of a license or legislative requirement, or an activity has happened which has or is likely to cause environmental harm”. The reports submitted as part of the EE process give DERM the information they need to better control the disputed activity.

One GILG member has been issued with an EE which directed them to provide DERM with further information about their air emissions.

A Transitional Environmental Program (TEP) is a formal process by which “an activity is bought into compliance with a legislative requirement” such as an operating license. They can be either voluntary or directed by DERM.

Under a TEP, the operator must “identify the objectives to be achieved taking into account best practice and risk, and commit to a timeline to rectify the issue and regularly report on the progress of the resolution. “

Of the 13 TEPs that have been issued to GILG members, eight related to water non-compliances, three to air and two to solid waste related non-compliances. These TEPs vary in seriousness from a temporarily broken stack analyzer to a leaking storage tank.

An Environment Protection Order (EPO) is a specific “DERM instruction used where clear and swift action is required to prevent environmental harm or to bring an activity into compliance with a legislative requirement. “

An EPO was issued to a GILG member in 2009 as a result of an unauthorised air emission.

If you would like to comment or ask questions about these enforcement actions, you can do so below.

If you would also like to have your say on how GILG is going and don't know how, please click on this link which shows you how to register and make a comment, anonymously if you wish.

I look forward to hearing from you soon, cheers, Kurt.