Tougher environment laws – Environmental Protection (Chain of Responsibility) Amendment Bill introduced to QLD Parliament

Queensland Environment Minister Steven Miles has introduced the Environmental Protection (Chain of Responsibility) Amendment Bill into QLD Parliament.

The Bill is aimed at ensuring companies in financial difficulty don’t shirk their environmental obligations.

“In the past 12 months, the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection has faced increasing difficulties in ensuring that sites operated by companies in financial difficulty continue to comply with their environmental obligations,’’ Dr Miles said. “Urgent amendments are required to ensure that the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (EHP) can effectively impose a chain of responsibility, so that these companies and their related parties bear the cost of managing and rehabilitating sites.

Dr Miles said the existing provisions of the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (EP Act) were inadequate and did not allow the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (EHP) to impose obligations on entities related to an insolvent company to prevent or clean-up environmental damage.

He said a key feature of the new Bill was allowing environmental protection orders to be issued to “a party” that had some relevant relationship to a company that was in financial difficulty (which may include, for example, a parent company or executive officer).

Other key points in the Bill include:

• providing that if one of these environmental protection orders is issued, and the recipient fails to comply with it, the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection may require the recipient to pay the costs of taking action stated in the order or monitoring compliance with the order,

• enabling the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection to amend environmental authorities when they are transferred to impose a condition requiring the provision of financial assurance, and

• ensuring that authorised officers under the EP Act have powers to access sites no longer subject to an environmental authority.