 Apologies, everybody. There's been a slight problem with transmission. I'm not sure quite what you will have missed out on, but today we have a presenter, Tony Corder-Gast from Tonkin and Taylor, and he'll be presenting on a new era of industrial facility environmental management in order to view on the New Environment Protection Act. We love questions on these webinars, so if you could please use the Q&A button at the top of the screen. That would be excellent in terms of logging your questions. Then Tony and I will do our best to answer those questions. If we can't answer those questions or if we run out of time for all the questions, we will email you responses to those. So please please make sure they keep coming. Hello, Tony, are you there? Yeah, I'm just waiting for things to move on. Yep. Michelle, do you want to take over the drive of the presentation? This one seems to have locked. Oh, there we go. Now it's working. Okay, we're having a few technical issues today. I apologise to everybody. Look, the objectives of this webinar series is to generate awareness, to share the knowledge of people we have a relationship out there, and that in this particular instance, it's about sharing knowledge of change in regulation. We're also hoping that we're contributing to the training of the industry as a whole, and out of the questions, we're hoping to see what the industry needs are. So if you can please provide questions back on that, then we can help you more. Okay, so firstly, we will talk through the housekeeping sort of things, which I've now completed. I'm now going to do an introduction to Tony, and then the last part of this webinar will be the Q&A section. Why this topic? Well, it's an interesting moment in time. We haven't had a change in the EP Act for a long time in Victoria, and in a Hydrochera Hazard philosophy that by combining technology and application knowledge, we can improve operational efficiency and reduce environmental impacts. What's exciting is this new Act actually will be encouraging for that. So it puts an obligation on industry to be proactive with respect to preventing impacts on the environment. Specifically, it focuses on preventing harm by making risk management a positive legal obligation. So in my opinion in the past, we spent a lot of money on environmental compliance, and that did not necessarily benefit the environment. We spent a lot of time waiting to see if there was an impact. This shift is a positive shift towards us having to take initiative to make sure we're minimising our impacts. So we believe that compliance with this Act will be a good thing for industry and the environment. So getting in an expert in the case, Tony, is going to be good for you to understand what your obligations are with respect to this. So a little bit about Tony. He's an environmental order and a senior environmental consultant with Tonkin and Taylor. He's also chair of the EPA Victorian landfill auditor technical group. So he's uniquely positioned to be able to talk to you about what's happening with the EPA and this Act and well informed through that role in that order to group. Tony's been in the industry for a long time, more than 40 years, both as a national and international, both with national and international experience covering more than a dozen countries. He has provided specialist services to public and private sector clients, as well as EPA Victoria, EPA New South Wales, South Australian EPA, Northern Territory EPA, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, UNCHS, Habitat, UNDP and New Zealand Aid. He's authored more than 20 technical papers as well as many technical seminars and lectures. He has acted as the Australasian contributor to the ISWA International Landfill Working Group and was formerly national vice president of WMRR, the peak body for the waste industry in Australia. He's also a life member of Waste MINZ. So in summary, he's got extensive experience as an EPA auditor. He's worked a lot with VCAT PV and planning and permitting experience in Australia and New Zealand. He's got strong knowledge around landfill development, design, construction and operation, also around contaminated land management, as well as dealing with facilities with waste recovery and reprocessing. So without further ado, I'd like to hand over to Tony, who will commence his presentation. Thank you, Richard, for that very kind introduction. I'm sure and hope everyone can hear me. Welcome to you all in this brave new COVID world. That was a lovely picture, Richard. I'm sure I can assure you I haven't aged a day since that picture was taken. But look, I'll start off with something really useful to start with, and that is that I hope you've all had your vaccinations or in the process of getting them wherever you are in Australia. It was very interesting to read today in the New York Times that 98% of people now being infected in the USA, including with the Delta variant of COVID-19, have not been vaccinated. So 98% of the people getting sick and then going to hospital in the US now are people who have not been vaccinated. The reality is that probably everybody, including all of us here today, will catch Delta or Gamma or Zeta or whatever other variant of this bug eventually gets to us. But you probably won't notice if you've been vaccinated. But if you haven't been vaccinated, beware. That's the message. That's my sort of opening totally off topic, Selva. So can we move on to the first slide, please? OK, some acknowledgments. Firstly, EPA Victoria staff, the materials they've been providing to auditors have been very useful, and I've cobbled a little bit of that material in my presentation today. EPA is in a very active process at the moment, and I'll come back to that as we go on. But I just wanted to acknowledge that anything you see that's come from EPA, thank you to the EPA for that. Gary Larson, you'll see a few comics as we go through in my humble opinion, the funniest man since Liz Dawson. I hope you all like Larson cartoons because you're going to see a few. So what I'm going to cover today and I'm conscious that we've got a wide variety of people listening in today from different backgrounds. So I'm not going to go into too much technical detail. If people have technical questions, by all means, ask them and we will do our best to answer them. I may have to go away and get answers if they're really tricky questions, but my whole purpose is to cover the new act in its core philosophy. In other words, what's really driving this change? What's the quantum shift that's going on here that people need to be aware of? Then I'll talk about the general environmental duty and its implications, particularly for industrial facility licence holders, people like the owners and operators of landfills and wastewater treatment plants, those sorts of things. Then I'll talk about the EPA guidance around the new regulations, what there is and what's still coming, and there is plenty still coming because very little exists. Then I'll talk a little bit about the environment reference standard, the RS. I'm going to touch on audit processes only pretty lightly, but I'll talk a little bit about 53x audits and PRSAs and also a little bit about section 53v audits, and then we'll have some time for questions. The first thing to note before we move on, though, is that it's early days. The new law is now enforced. As you can see there, it commenced on the 1st of July. That's in the absence of a lot of really hard concrete guidance, but the new law is enforced and that's the bottom line. The regulations were made earlier in the year, and the guidance is being released by the EPA as it's ready, and right at this point in time, there's not an awful lot that is ready. So I think what you've got to assume is that it's business as usual for now, act on the general environmental duty that applies to everybody, and note the progressive change that's going on in terms of regulatory and audit processes that we all follow. So the first thing really to talk about is the core philosophy behind the act. What's actually changed? The old 1970 Act focus was arguably a reactive type of legislation. It goes way back to Californian law, which goes back an awful long time, and the 1970 Act in Victoria was certainly a really, really positive change in terms of the Victorian environment. It was focused on the right hand side that you can see protecting human health and the environment from the EPA's perspective by punishing polluters that caused harm. So you could call it kind of the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff type approach, if you like. Probably a little bit unfair, but that's kind of the analogy. The EPA would issue licences, they'd apply that issue pans, they would warn people to stop doing things that go out and inspect sites. If you were really, really bad, then you got punished. All pretty reactive. And as times gone by and international risk assessment standards and things have emerged and the whole world's changed a bit to a more preventative focus, then what's happened is this transition to the new act brought about as a result of a parliamentary review of the whole system. And the aim here is to prevent harm and do that by making risk management a positive legal obligation. So the aim is to move from reactive to preventative. And as I'll come to in a moment, that's based on essentially what's happened in the area of health and safety. So under the new act, the EPA, the trend that's that you can see here on this slide was foreshadowed by John Merritt, the former EPA CEO, going back a couple of CEOs. I remember meeting with John early in the piece, he was ex-work safe. So he had a very different view of how the EPA should operate. Then leading into the parliamentary review, then we've gone to this new mantra, which is all about preventing, preventing, raising awareness and then taking what's called proportionate action and holding offenders to account. We'll come a bit more in a bit more detail to some of that in a minute, but just how all that happens is actually yet to emerge. However, I would say I've seen some positive trends and one of the things there is around encouraging higher performance and assisting people to get stuff done. The EPA has introduced a new online portal. The initial use of that primarily is to get PRSAs processed and I'll come back to that a bit later. But the EPA is definitely trying to make progress in terms of supporting people to comply with the act and get work done under the act in a way that was easier than it was before. A little simple example, yet on in the new EPA portal, you can now make payment for certain things online, whereas you could never do that before. Did we miss a slide, guys? I think can you go back up one? There's a slide missing. That's slightly annoying. Okay, the next one, maybe it's gotten out of water somehow. That's it. That's supposed to be the next one. Sorry. Okay, so the general environmental duty. What's this all about? Okay, so that what the act actually states is a person who is engaging in an activity that may give rise to risks of harm to human health or the environment from pollution or waste must minimize those risks so far as reasonably practical. A little cartoon there. The point here is it's not terribly difficult to grasp the concept, but it's certainly going to be a little bit more difficult to implement it. So that's the headline message. If we could please go back up one slide and we'll delve into a little bit of the framework that sits behind that. So firstly, the duties that are implied in the act and the various sections I've listed there and we can share all of this afterwards is that people and this means everybody have to act to respond to harm caused by a pollution incident. You have to notify the authority of notifiable incidents and those are listed in section 32. You have to manage contaminated land. You have to notify of contaminated land and we'll come back to that a little bit. Waste duties also apply in addition to the GED which include duties around depositing, receiving and transporting industrial waste, priority waste and reportable priority waste and that latter part around waste transport and waste control has been a real priority for the EPA because they did not want to see that kind of get out of control during the transition into the new act. There's a duty around material harm which if that's of relevance to you you can look that up but the the key thing here is this applies to everyone. It applies to landowners and license holders in particular and responsible persons within those types of organizations carrying out this type of work that can cause pollution. Landful operator as a classic example need to be prepared. You need to understand what it is you need to do and similarly if you're out on a site acting as a consultant or doing work for a license holder within the ambit of that general environmental duty the perspective you take on things that are going on on site may change over time. I know that in my company we've had quite a bit of discussion about how far that responsibility actually extends and I'll come back to that in a moment. So we'll just jump on to the next one please and then the next one. So what's the philosophy behind the act? Minimizing the risk of harm to human health in the environment that's a fundamental thing. So first thing is to eliminate risks so far as you're reasonably it's reasonably practical to do so and if it's not reasonably practical to eliminate the risks then you need to reduce the risks as far as you are reasonably practical. This is all paralleled from the OH&S laws and we all I think in our jobs understand what they mean. They mean you have to be very very careful. You have to have a preventative mantra. You have to have proactive risk assessment and management by your facility owners and operators. There's no excuses. There is direct accountability that will sheet back if you should have done something and you didn't. Now having said that there's still a lot of water to go under the bridge. There's no case law yet and that's all going to take a bit of time to play out. Next slide. Thank you. So what is reasonably practical actually mean? Well it depends on the likelihood of something happening. It depends on the degree of harm that might arise. It depends on your knowledge, your specific knowledge of the issue. It depends on what the options are that are available and it depends on the cost of eliminating and reducing the hazard or the risk. Ultimately the courts are going to decide on this. Right now none of nothing's come to court and we don't know how the courts are going to treat this but in practice for facility owners and operators the things that I would suggest you really take account of are being proactive in terms of risk management, being current. Make sure you've got management plans and standard operating procedures in place. Don't sit on your hands. Carry out regular review and risk assessment. Don't drop the ball on data and monitoring and say when someone comes knocking in six months and say well we didn't know what was going on so we just sort of stopped doing stuff. That won't cut it. Record keeping is really really important because you need to demonstrate that you've done all of this reasonably practicable. Accountability is a real issue now. It's really going to be very important in terms of site management plans and operating procedures to be clear who's accountable for what. Audits are not dead and I'll come back to that in a moment. They will be ongoing but they will change. And we have a new land development tool which is called the PRSA, the preliminary risk site assessment and I'll come to that in a bit more detail. I'll just add before we move on to the next slide. There's also some changes going on at Dwellp. Their new website is up and running and they'll be rolling out changes to things like planning practice note 30 and that type of document which might be of relevance to you. So the next slide please. So the EPA guidance, where's that at? Well the best thing to say is it's emerging somewhat slowly. The auditor population are probably much more across this than others and the reason for that is that the EPA's been going through an extensive process of consultation with auditors about what form these guidance documents should take and that all followed off course making the regulations and until the regulations were made the guidance couldn't be developed and hence engagement with the wider community facility owners and auditors couldn't develop. So that's taken a lot of time. It's been a catch-up and transition process. Some would argue that COVID-19's delayed all of this. I would argue that it's probably helped in the sense that the original date of 2020 last year was impossible, I think, to achieve. COVID-19's been a disruptor but it's also allowed everybody to draw breath. We had another year to sort of sort this stuff out but we are still in a situation where not much guidance has been issued. There's some out there in draft that auditors have been privy to but not a lot of others as yet. There are transitional guidelines published for auditors and there's also transitional guidance for license holders, publication 2019, which many of you will have seen. The environmental reference standard has been published and I'll come back to that in a moment. There's a PRSA draft document and guidelines for conducting PRSAs. Waste classification and transportation guidelines, if not published, must be very, very close to it as well as a number of other transitional guidance documents that are emerging. But for now, it's important to remember that your licenses and active pens will continue to be enforced until such time as they're not and have been superseded. So in terms of some of the specifics, go have a look at the EPA portal page. I kind of apologise when you do in the sense that the search function that's there ain't what it used to be. The EPA old website, which was pretty clunky, had a very good search function which meant you could you could find stuff pretty easily. I don't think that's the case now. The EPA's kind of parked dealing with their website probably to last understandably, but it's quite hard to find stuff. Publication 2019 I just mentioned. It's probably the most critical one, and I'm sure by now everybody who's got a license and runs an IF facility will have read that. It doesn't actually tell you terribly much other than that everything continues until things get changed. Waste tracker and PRSA processes have clearly been the EPA's priority. I'm aware that there's a whole lot more guidance emerging as we speak and I expect that you'll see an awful lot more of it before the end of August. So we'll move on to the next one. So under the new act what's the audit system look like? Well as many of you will know or all of you will know under the old act we had 53v audits which were risk based audits used for industrial facilities and things like landfill operational audits and those types of things were all risk audits. 53x audits which were contaminated land audits which were essentially a state-of-the-environment audit and resulted in a certificate or statement telling you what the condition of the land was and what restrictions needed to be placed on it. Well under the new act we're going to move to something that is more of a risk-based audit system. So in other words it's more like intended to be more like 53v's and 53x's and 53x's to a large extent are going to be overtaken by PRSA's plus possibly audits where they are required. So the new new audit system will be very much more risk-based. That might mean changes to future audit to roles and responsibilities but that hasn't really been discussed in any great depth yet but there will probably be a broader ambit of audits is able to do to do this audit work. Right now though it's business as usual for industrial facility audits such as for landfill cell construction nothing much is going to change for a while. In the 53x area the big new change is this preliminary risk side assessment which is a screening process that relates mainly to land development and that will result in either the issue of a certificate or the requirement for an audit. I'll touch on that a bit further in a minute but as I've said for now 53v audits will continue. So we'll go to the next one please. So some notable changes which some will find interesting and in language using language now that only your mother could love. We used to have this thing called a QTEP clean up to the extent practicable for groundwater and contaminated land that was groundwater QTEP was was EPA audits are determined in the in the past and sometimes resulted in the imposition of what was called a GRUZ which was a groundwater quality restricted use zone in other words groundwater that was morally sterilized for certain uses that's now gone completely gone. EPA will not determine QTEP post one July so it is dead and gone. We now have this charming term called a CUSFARP which is clean up so far as reasonably practical and you might say well what's the difference? Well it's not entirely clear just as yet but there's a different process and instead of determining QTEP the EPA will be making decisions with auditors around whether the cleanup is so far as reasonably practical and if there are restrictions on groundwater use that ensue from that then they need to be defined in the audit report rather than separately determined. So next slide please. Okay so site and environmental licenses we've touched on them these will continue for now as do standard and specific license license conditions for now but the general environmental duty I think it's really important that people recognize that that will likely trump the nuance of most license conditions that's yet to be tested but that's the way I see it and what that means is that the owners on operators can be expected to increase over time rather than decrease. License conditions changes will emerge but they haven't emerged yet but a couple of examples and some of you will be familiar with these landfill face size and landfill odor management are good examples. At the moment what happens for example is the EPA sets a landfill face size in a license condition. It sets the requirement to not cause odor in the license condition and then if there is an exceedance of those things or they go and measure your landfill face size with a drone and it's found to be too big then they issue you with a pan and try and do something about it. This is going to change I think very much if I use the odor odor parallels probably the easiest to much more if if you cause odor no matter what the reason whether it's the face size or whether it's from leaking landfill gas wells or for some other reason that's the issue you have caused the odor and if it meets the kind of nuisance requirements that we've typically addressed using FIDOL then then you're going to be in trouble because the operator of the facility is held responsible for having taken all practical steps to avoid that happening. So that's just going back to if you can think back to that earlier slide that's moving it from getting clobbered once it's happened to getting clobbered because you didn't not because you didn't comply with your license condition but because you didn't do all the things you should have done to avoid it happening in the first place that is the the nub of the change. Okay next one please just conscious of time I'll buzz three of about three more slides we'll get through them pretty quickly. So the environmental reference standard that's a new instrument from the first of July it consolidates a range of previous guidance and scratches some stuff that was out of date it's basically now the bible it aims to support monitoring and reporting on the condition of the environment by providing a scientific benchmark in other words this is the bottom line it will certainly inform decision making by entities such as VCAT planning Victoria EPA. So at first place they will go is to the ERS orders of course have to have regard not only to the ERS but also to any other relevant environmental reference standard but the ERS is now definitely the top of the environmental management system hierarchy in Victoria so don't forget that that's the starting point that's where the baselines are set out next slide please I'm just touching briefly on PRSA's effectively these are a screening level environmental assessment that will be carried out for a site predominantly by auditors I think there will be some scope for other people to do to do those over time but for now it's auditors the key objective of a PRSA is essentially to assess the likelihood of contamination that's contaminated land or groundwater is it there or is it not and the reason the way that's done sorry is by looking at the site history by looking at aerial photographic records by looking at all of those usual things that we would look at in a in conducting a preliminary site assessment to determine whether it's likely that contamination is present if it's likely then the PRSA will either issue a statement saying what restrictions ought to apply or it will determine that an audit is required and recommend the scope for that audit that whole process will be completed online now and the the hot the document we submitted through the EPA portal online and processed very very quickly so if you've got a piece of land and you're trying to develop it it's not a matter of waiting forever for an audit report to be done before you do anything PRSA will be is intended to be a fast risk based first screen all right next slide please okay this is the the last slide so what are some practical steps for industrial facility owners and operators what are the things you could and should do right now to kind of keep abreast of all of this well I think the first thing is don't over stress about it for now even though the act has changed you know all of the existing instruments are still in place you still need to carry on as if you are adopting a business as usual perspective what that means is meet your license conditions they still apply don't think that they will been tossed out the window stay informed access EPA resources there will be more and more of them emerging and that will enable you to engage with the EPA seek advice when you're not sure about stuff and plug for the consultants out there we have got a role to play helping people through this process and be proactive in relation to your systems processes monitoring and record keeping don't drop the ball don't let things slip make sure you're doing all the things that you should be doing and if anything more remember the general environmental duty and its associated accountability need to be very clear within your own organisations who's accountable for what because ignorance is no longer bliss and what I call the AFF method will no longer work and why by AFF I mean ask for forgiveness there's an old saying that it's sometimes easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission I don't think that will get you terribly far under the new act need to be aware of that watch for developments watch for prosecutions in case law that's going to take a little bit of time as will the transition but ultimately the courts are going to decide on what a number of these things mean in specific circumstances so it's all going to take a little bit of time to play out meanwhile do everything well keep good records and keep up to date and things will all be okay that's it thank you all right well thank you very much Tony certainly a fair bit for everyone to digest and I guess adapt to I went through the presentation before this and just listed a few of the key things that came to mind from myself I think the act should improve environmental outcome so I think it is a positive thing and definitely something that we should embrace rather than us monitoring and sort of then dealing with it when it's a problem so it should be a good thing remember to go and speak to the EPA I think everyone's cognizant that this is something new and that we're working through a transition I think Tony's done a good effort at communicating that the third dot point be proactive in relation to systems processes monitoring and record keeping is one that I was going to explore a little bit more with Tony at the moment we have a whole lot of systems that run businesses you know so a lot of people have quality accredited systems and they tend to be more about operational and now we're being asked to effectively look at those systems in the context of how they will prevent us impacting on the environment so I think there's an interesting moment where those systems are becoming more and more linked to environmental compliance so Tony I was interested in you had a slide where you you did talk about making sure people have their SOPs in place and that sort of thing but I was interested in your view on whether or not you see that in the end it's going to be critical for all operators to have a quality system and have those processes documented and compliance with those processes would almost be under two levels of regulation you know you're sort of a credited quality system side of things as well as compliance with EPA do you have a view on that Yeah I think that's right whether you have two systems I'm not so sure about but look the shift in line with ISO 14000 and all the international kind of risk based guidance is that a risk approach to prevent harm is where the direction that this is all going in and you know the parallel is obvious with health and safety where that's gone over the last 20 years you know 20 years ago or whatever if someone was badly hurt or injured on a site or it used to be a case of how did that happen oh gosh we better not do that again that sometimes has pretty tragic outcomes so the health and safety processes we've all seen it in our businesses and in day-to-day activities have moved upstream from that saying what could go wrong what are we doing about making sure it doesn't go wrong and if something does go wrong you know what does that say about our analysis so gone from a compliance kind of mindset to a preventative mindset and I think it's just the same for all environmental systems in other words what is causing the greatest risk how can we mitigate that risk and ideally before that how can we actually eliminate the risk so if you take the you know the case of a landfill I gave the example before you know it's probably no good not good enough now for example to be saying oh we monitor odour complaints from our facility and we had six last month and that was less than the month before silver okay that won't cut it I mean what you will need to be doing is to say we have figured out what our source potential sources of odour are we've figured out which are the ones that are likely to give rise to the greatest harm or off-site impact and this is what we've done about them we've eliminated this one by doing that we've mitigated this one by doing that and as a result our complaints are dropping does that shift make sense it makes sense to me if you're seen by EPA not to have achieved that what's their their choices of action towards the operators well ultimately you know there's prosecution if you simply haven't done enough and that's demonstrated to the courts and we've as I said we've got to see all that play out that will take years to play out in terms of case law but in the interim the EPA is obviously considering what other weapons it has in its arsenal to get stuff rectified and done I mean at the moment they have this mechanism called a pollution abatement notice now that may morph into something else but I expect we're still going to see similar types of processes where if the EPA is aware something's going wrong they will warn people they will try and help people to fix it I mean if you go back to that kind of circular diagram which we can share which I put up early on in the presentation their whole mantra is about supporting encouraging helping people improve systems and processes so you don't kind of do that by clobbering people at the first first sort of instance of something going wrong you get you make progress by encouraging people to improve but just how that the mix of all of that plays out over time we just have to wait and see okay well a good answer Tony I'm just looking we've got some questions coming into the Q&A box so I will endeavour to open that up all right so Paul McGraw good to hear from you Paul schedule three methane gas levels schedule three is covering the values as in the Beppham landfill but no mention of the carbon dioxide one and a half percent volume in the regulations is this an indication there might be changes in any guidance regarding landfill offsite gas monitoring with carbon dioxide short answer is yes I'm aware that the EPA has struggled with the CO2 levels that are in the Beppham for a long time they've been a constant source of debate and argument I've written a number of rewarded reports or I've suggested they just be ignored all together so yes I think that's a recognition that methane's what's the most important CO2 has a place in some situations in terms of as an indicator but yeah I think you can expect to see the next version of the Beppham worded differently okay Aravind wanted to know if this presentation can be shared I would have thought the answer was yes you're okay with that Tony yeah except you have to recognize I haven't got permission to use or Mr Larson's cartoons other than having to flog them off flog them off the internet maybe we'll take the cartoons off and then we'll we'll circulate it after that just wouldn't quite the same okay next questions from Dan Evans Hi Tony thanks for the talk useful summary and I agree the transition from a punitive compliance to proactive pragmatic management approach should be beneficial in the long runs long run once the bumps in the road are smoothed out wonder if you think the rapid assessment process you mentioned will be incorporated into the approvals pathway for new developments no I don't think so I think the PRSA process applies to contaminated land and groundwater and that's more of coming from a planning perspective in other words what can land be used for I think the processes of application for you know facility development you know what used to be a works approval type process that will change but I think it will it will still be a different process okay Aravind another question in that example of Oda combating measures whose responsibility is it to provide BMPs to operators the MPs they by that mean presumably meaning operating procedures or management procedures yeah okay that's management I think yeah yeah well it's it's the facility ultimately it's the facility holder and the owner the holder of the license so let's just say it's company XYZ that's operating a landfill somewhere in Metro Melbourne that company will hold the license from EPA and the officers of that company will be responsible for implementing that license or the requirements of that license as well as doing all the other stuff under the GED and making sure that there's a cascade of responsibility so that by the time it gets to the people in the field who are actually trying to do the work and and trying to implement measures then that's all sensible documented and everybody's clear what they've got to do if you want to draw a health and safety parallel to this it's the same thing you find that if there's a safety there's a fertility on a job site heaven forbid but if there is you see what happens in the courts a lot of different people get the book thrown at them including the the person who was actually responsible and the you know the the next person up the chain for when something went wrong they're obviously in the firing line but then you also find directors and officers of the company management are also all in the firing line if they cannot demonstrate that they've done what they needed to do to make sure procedures were in place slightly long wanted to answer but um yeah accountability is both specific and general is probably the best way to put it and it is very similar to the OH&S very similar to the OH&S law and I think if people just keep that in the back of their mind I think that that will serve them well okay we've got a few more questions we better keep moving Teal Watkins a question close to my heart are the APA currently exploring new technologies to help organizations prevent harm okay and new technologies what do we mean by that online forms or online whatever I'm just not quite sure what that would mean I think I think they're main in terms of innovation so I suppose the way I view this question is there's an onus on making your operations better and better to minimize the likelihood of say odor occurring and those systems may be automated like a real-time sensor and alarm or it might be automation of control of things that would otherwise cause odor to occur whether it's a pumping system or whatever you see that playing out okay nothing obvious at the moment the only example right now is that I can point to is the portal where the EPA is trying to make transactions easier in terms of their processes with the EPA but if you look at that kind of circular diagram I had you know they have on their encourage higher performance inform and educate so presumably somewhere within that those two boxes there is the ability to the sorts of things that the person's asking about I think that will all take time right now the only things that I'm seeing really are new guidance and technologies to to make everybody aware of that guidance beyond that I haven't seen anything as yet I suppose it will evolve with time yeah this is a people have to recognize this is a massive quantum shift the last act was enacted in 1970 based on earlier legislation from California I mean that's 50 years ago it's an awful long time ago in legal terms it's ancient so you know we can't expect that we're going to suddenly rush from doing one set of things over here called A doing a whole new set of things over here called B the thing that people have to recognize is that we're moving from A to B so shift your A thinking now to all the things that you still have to do under A but start thinking B okay Anna Cochran hello Anna long time thank you Tony for the plain language overview of the new laws new general license conditions are coming for license holders to develop a formal risk management and monitoring program and a decommissioning plan would be interested to hear your view on the role if any for auditors in reviewing and approving these plans yeah good question hello Anna I'm nice to talk to you I haven't seen you for a while yes you know as I said the the EPA is going to generalize some of these license conditions so that you get back to a sort of site specific approach so I'm sure there's a role for experts out there to advise facility owners on the risk assessment and risk management side we've kind of as Anna I know you know we've done a bit of this in the past particularly around stuff like landfill gas so yes I think the the whole process of getting more precise and more scientific about risk assessment and risk management that will elevate under those new license conditions and yes there will be roles for people to play hello I think we might have company sorry I think Richard dropped out yes sorry I'm I'm back now I do apologize I zoom dropped out completely then just checking if I've got the Q&A okay unfortunately with that dropping out I can see them okay do you want to take over asking then that would be awesome thanks okay and on a second okay Anna we answered somebody like my cartoons Aravind good okay Aravind has asked the question but a lot of audit causing sources and solutions are unknown yeah I accept that to a point in a lot of cases they are known and if I look internationally I can name plenty of examples of facilities in Victoria where people are not implementing best practice audit management the people can do a better job than is being done in some cases so I think now those chickens are going to come home to rest of it okay the next one can you please let me know where the cat seed soil can be reused on site and does the A16 permit apply well that's a tricky question and I don't think I'll answer that one today we can take that one away and have a look at it but yeah there's quite a lot of debate going on in that whole contaminated soil space at the moment so I could I could suggest an answer but I think I'd rather take that one on notice and come back on that one if that's all right I can't believe it no no no this is this is a minefield at the moment are there any more questions there one more a current question clear emphasis on state of knowledge and that this will be in an interactive or I'm not sure what that was I think it must I think it means interactive that that word it's going to see missing I think it's more of a comment than a question but state of knowledge yeah I mean I guess my message is keep yourselves informed there will be material coming out EPA will be will be advertising that not entirely sure how yet but they will be if they say what they're going they say if they do what they say they're going to do they will be pretty proactive in getting that information out to industry so just keep up as the message iterative sorry iterative process yes I'm not quite sure about that it'll become iterative in the sense that people along the way both the EPA and the operators of facilities will figure out where the fish looks are in the new license conditions or new standard license conditions or the process that EPA is following in terms of keeping people up to the mark like everything it's driven by regulation and determined by ultimately by court action and processes around that so we have to recognize that right now we've got no case law under the new act in it and it's just going to take some time so as a result of that yes there will be iterations to the process that's just going to take time I've got a question for you Tony you mentioned the PRSA I wanted to be clear who can actually undertake that at the moment auditors and auditors only is my understanding I have to stand corrected if that's wrong but my understanding is that PRSAs must be undertaken by auditors there is talk about allowing other environmental professionals to potentially undertake them in the future but I don't believe that's been agreed to as yet another question here is the ERS meant to replace SEPs that's a an interesting question because I think the answer is it's half and half the ERS is basically the reference standard the SEPs are still there but over time they will get rejigged as well I think but right now if for example you had to say right what is the maximum allowable concentration of chromium in an estuarine environment in Victoria you would go to the ERS to get that in terms of what the level of concentration that you've actually got has on the beneficial uses of that estuarine water then you still rely on the SEP for that Tony I've got another question um some would say that the changes to the OH&S Act have led to perhaps an overly zealous system and some processes that maybe over the top do you think we're likely to get into that situation through the the way the EPA acts been settled look I would hope not I understand the subtlety of the point you're making and I would hope not of course you have this great dichotomy between the level of risk you can take as a private individual driving a rally car or a racing car or doing skydiving or something else that some people would consider crazy dangerous compared to what you can do in a business and the level of documentation you need to keep as a business owner around all sorts of things so this you kind of got this you know an OH&S it's almost a double standard I think between the private sector and the public sector again time is going to tell because the if somebody gets prosecutors and taken off to to court about not having done enough or not having done the right things in terms of managing their risks to the environment of course the case has to end up getting proved and what that burden of proof is going to be has yet to be determined you know as I said in the presentation the act talks about things like reasonably practicable and you know and so what that the court will say is well what would a reasonable person do here what was the likelihood of this thing occurring what was the risk of harm that people understand that had they explored it had they taken all reasonable steps all those things have got to play out over time and hopefully as a result of that the courts will set some sensible requirements about what's reasonable and what isn't for the IPA to expect yeah thanks for that we've got another question here we'll take just a couple more it's 131 hi Tony thanks for this presentation I would be interested in your advice to landowners who have 53x audits with due dates many years therefore 358 and 7 from now I suspect that land owners will be keen to move to current regulatory mechanisms rather than keep working under superseded regulations soon rather than later yeah I guess if a land future land use or restrictions on that land use has already been determined by a 53x audit then that's it until the IPA might agree to change that so I think this is probably a case where that's it for now but I think that engage with the IPA purely early on in the piece and just see what the future looks like you know for that that specific site or 53x requirement you know once and all it's been determined it's been determined that's kind of so it's there now and you'll have to talk to the IPA about that one I think but I understand the point I've got a couple of sites I'm working on where you know we've recommended and in fact as recently as last week I've recommended another 53x V audit in five years time and I doubt that will change under the new regulations that audit will still need to still need to occur Aravind who's been very busy on questions today basically PRSA will replace PSI and DSI the former two can be undertaken by consultants so I guess that's a is that's a bit of a statement but do you agree with that Tony? Yeah look I'm not a 53x auditor but my understanding is the PRSA may what one of the two outcomes of a PSI PRSA is that an audit can be triggered in which case then you need to do the DSI so it overlaps certainly with the PSI whether it overlaps with the DSI or not depends I think whether an audit gets triggered hopefully that makes sense Look I think we're out of time I just wanted to say Tony that this was one of the highest ever attended webinars we had over 90 attendees today and I would really like to thank everyone for their attendance and their questions obviously the attendance is a reflection of your standing in the industry so we really appreciate your contribution today If you have any more questions feel free to email ourselves or Tony at Tonkin and Taylor but really good presentation I'd also like to just acknowledge a few people behind the scenes today we had one of the most traumatic starts to a webinar ever and I would like to acknowledge Carla, Michelle and Marcio in Hydra Terra for sorting out the back end side of things I'd like to also thank Tony for his patience but thank you very much everybody for attending today No problem, it was a pleasure seeing the questions through if there's any more I'll do my best to answer them thanks very much Thanks very much Tony Okay, see you all Bye