EPA compliance

All mining companies are required to report any incidents where they fail to comply with their EPA Licences.  The EPA publishes this information on its website, as required by the Protection of the Environment Operations (POEO) Act.  

EPA licence compliance is a self-reporting system where the onus is on the mining company to report their non-compliance with their conditions of consent.  A summary of notices is published on the EPA’s website: (Activity type – Coal Mining)

http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/prpoeo/searchregister.aspx

Coal companies include statements of compliance in their annual returns, which must detail the nature and extent of any non-compliance with their licence conditions, including what action has been, or will be, taken to mitigate any adverse effects of the non-compliance, and to prevent a recurrence of the non-compliance.  This level of detail is often missing from the current EPA public register.

The EPA does not provide detailed public information on actions taken in relation to specific non-compliances, which means that the public has to deal directly with the mining companies.  The Greens are also calling on the Government to amend the POEO Act to make this detailed information available on the public register.

Rate of non-compliance incidents is increasing

The number of incidents of non-compliance by mining companies reported to the EPA has increased dramatically since 2000:

In part this is due to the EPA’s reporting rules changing in 2004 requiring companies to report each non-compliance as a separate incident.  (See below)

Under reporting of non-compliance

The level of non-compliance is much higher than the figures suggest. Prior to September 2004, the EPA did not require companies to report each instance of non-compliances separately, so the figures are grossly under representative.  Thus a single reported incident could involve a failure to monitor pollution at a given site every day for an entire year.

For example, in 2001 Hunter Valley Energy, based in Muswellbrook reported an incident where it failed to maintain a haul road to minimise dust.  For all we know, this one incident could have related to the entire year long reporting period.  In 2002 at the Enhance Place Colliery near Lithgow, one reported incident of unacceptably high water pH levels occurred throughout the entire year.  

EPA prosecutions

The EPA successfully ran 488 prosecutions during the 2000 – 2006 period for licence non-compliance in NSW.  Only three prosecutions listed on the EPA register are against coal mining companies listed for EPA licence breeches, with fines totalling a mere $95,000.

31/10/2006  CENTENNIAL NEWSTAN PTY LTD – Fined $50,000

17/07/2003 LITHGOW COAL COMPANY PTY LTD – Fined $30,000

03/09/2002 ULAN COAL MINES LTD – Fined $15,000

* Source – EPA website: http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/prpoeo/searchcases.aspx

Reasons given by mining companies for non-compliance

Mining companies give very unsatisfactory - sometimes downright absurd -  reasons for failing to carry out pollution monitoring, or discharging polluted water, such as:

• Excessive rainfall causing tailings dams to overflow
• Sample bottle broken during transport
• Sample bottles stolen
• Land owner blocked access to sampling site
• Guard dogs making it hard to access samples
• Feral animals chewing power cables
• Horses rubbing against the gauge
• Excessive bird droppings on samples

Surely these problems could have been foreseen and dealt with?  Communities rely on this monitoring system for the protection of their air and water supply.

Current EPA offices

The EPA has been effectively disbanded and absorbed into the Department of Environment and Climate Change.  Certain statutory functions and powers continue to be exercised in the name of the EPA until the relevant legislation is next reviewed and amended (Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997). 

There are around 100 EPA technical staff and inspectors, based largely in two offices in Parramatta (Sydney) and Newcastle.  There are small numbers of EPA staff based in DECC offices in Sydney’s CBD, Murwillumbah, Grafton, Armidale, Queanbeyan, Wollongong, Albury, Dubbo, Bathurst and Griffith.

There are no EPA offices in the Upper Hunter, Mudgee and Lithgow where coal mining is expanding.  Very few infringement notices are issued against mining companies and mining companies are rarely prosecuted.  

Mineral Resources Minister Macdonald in Parliament

Lee Rhiannon questioned the Minister for Mineral Resources in Parliament about EPA non compliance:

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/PARLMENT/hansArt.nsf/V3Key/LC20071024014

The Minister said that he had not heard complaints from the people of Muswellbrook, citing his visits to the Labor Party branch.  The Minister is clearly unaware of the reports that Upper Hunter residents have made to the EPA office in Newcastle. 

He also played down the seriousness of the state’s problems with coal mining non-compliance, and mistakenly confused Mt Arthur’s parent company BHP Billiton with Xstrata.

Southern Coalfield non-compliance

During 2000-2006 the 12 mines in the Southern coalfield listed on the EPA website reported 435 incidents of EPA licence non-compliance. 80% of those reports relate to breeches concerning water pollution. In fact, the worst offender was Tahmoor Coal Pty Ltd, which reported 63 incidents of water pollution in the year from May 2005 to April 2006 alone. 

Dendrobium Coal Pty Ltd, at Mount Kembla, reported 75 incidents of breaches of water pollution in the two years from Jun 2004 to May 2006. The two mines cited here have been in breech of their licence conditions concerning water pollution over 160 times in this two-year period.

Greens MP and mining spokesperson Lee Rhiannon said:

“There is a clear need for the Government to open EPA offices in the coal communities of the Illawarra.

“At present coal communities have to rely on mining companies to conduct monitoring and report their environmental performance, and clearly they are not upholding their responsibilities.

“How can coal communities have any confidence in environmental monitoring and reporting when the rates of EPA licence non-compliance are so high, and increased so dramatically since 2000?

“The Mineral Resources Minister Ian MacDonald is arrogant to down play the seriousness of pollution in mining communities and its impact on human health.”
For more information:  Lee Rhiannon - 0427 861 568; 9230 3551