Peel Inlet and Harvey Estuary System Management Strategy ...

EPA Report on the Peel-Harvey Progress and Compliance Report, 2003
Ideally, a compliance review should focus more on whether the intent of the Conditions
has been met rather than strictly focusing on whether the minutiae of the legal aspects
have been met. Any resultant changes to the management requirements of the project
must recognise that the proposal is already being implemented, degrees of freedom have
been reduced, and thus for some types of proposal achieving major changes may not be
practicable or possible.
The ERC has identified the following problems in carrying out the PCR review for Peel-
Harvey:
a) the PCR documentation was prepared in isolation with no input from the EPA.
The Environmental Condition sets out that the PCR shall be prepared in
consultation with the EPA;
b) the PCR documentation in many instances does not contain adequate information
to enable the Expert Review Committee to be able to tell whether the Condition has
been fully complied with, or for the EPA to be able to verify compliance. The onus
is on a proponent to provide information to enable compliance to be determined,
and in the absence of such information being provided it would be reasonable for
the EPA to record potential non-compliance;
c) the PCR document expresses the personal opinions of senior staff from the
proponent agencies in terms of claims of compliance rather than providing the
information in a more objective form that would enable the EPA (and others) to
form such judgements;
d) the PCR (and other documentation) was made public before it was approved for
release by the EPA, and the proponents claims about their compliance was
extensively publicised in the Peel-Harvey area, as well as provided to their
Ministers. The proponents claim that they are in full compliance for some items
when this is clearly not the case;
e) the way in which the Environmental Conditions were styled in the PCR made it
very difficult to follow, focusing as it did on the many small “compliance
elements” identified by the DEP audit group. Had the EPA been involved in the
development of the PCR it would have advised the proponents to stay with the
broad requirements of the Conditions and their intent as set out in the EPA’s 1988
assessment report; and
f) there are numerous examples of difficulties arising from differences in perception
of issues, requirements and the legal status of the Conditions and the EPP,
including on matters of fact including on the nature of the environmental objective
and legal requirements on proponents.
The Expert Review Committee suggests the following approach should be adopted to
improve the PCR process and ensure that it is fair to proponents and the community. The
EPA welcomes this advice and endorses the ERC recommendations PCR 1 to PCR 4 as a
guide in relation to the PCR review process.
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