2016-02-02 Planning & Organisation Committee Agenda

PLANNING & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                          2 FEBRUARY 2016


On the downside, Healthy Waterways, which is an independent not for profit organisation
based in south-east Queensland, state that the increasing amount of mud (i.e. sediment) in
waters has now become a critical issue across South East Queensland waters.

Statutory responsibilities

In the Noosa Shire, statutory management responsibilities to protect EVs and WQOs still
focus on point source emissions, as well as urban diffuse emissions. These include:
   ensuring the Eumundi Road landfill is compliant with its ERA licence conditions;
   ensuring other ERA licenced businesses are compliant;
   ensuring dredging operations and other waterways related projects are compliant with
     State approvals and conditions;
   ensuring the quality of stormwater quality leaving new residential developments is the
     best it can be; and
   investigating complaints relating to pollution incidents, particularly occurring via the
     stormwater network.

Could more be done?

Business activities and individual practices

Council currently undertakes annual inspections of nine ERA licensed businesses across the
Shire to ensure compliance with their licence conditions. These include three boat
maintenance and repair businesses, one metal recovery business, one surface coating
business and four plastic product manufacturing businesses.

Prior to the State Government’s introduction of the Green Tape Reduction Act 2012, Council
undertook inspections of 128 ERA licensed businesses in the Shire. The subsequent
reductions in licenced businesses mean that many no longer need to hold an environmental
authority with Council, although they still need to comply with the standards. As a result, in
most cases whilst Council is still responsible for investigating pollution incidents and
environmental nuisances, these are complaint driven.

One option for consideration therefore, may be to consider establishing an inspection
programme to check compliance of the now non-ERA licensed businesses. This could be
achieved through prioritisation of existing resources. These businesses formerly had the
potential to release contaminants to the environment which could impact on the EVs and
WQOs of the Shire’s natural waters. Examples of these non-ERA businesses include:
   asphalt manufacturing (< 1000 tonnes/yr);
   concrete batching;
   chemical storage;
   boilermaking or engineering;
   motor vehicle workshop operations; and
   wooden and laminated product manufacturing.

In addition there are a number of individual and/or business practices that release sediment
and other contaminants to receiving waters of the Shire, predominantly via the stormwater
network.


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