EPA Annual Report 1992-1993
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Foreword To the Hon Kevin Minson, MLA Minister for the Environment In accordance with Section 21 of the Environmental Protection Act 1986, I submit the Authority's annual report for the year ended June 30, 1993. BA Carbon Cltairman Perth, Western Australia October 1993 Environmenwl Protection Authority Chairman's overview An era of change not factories. Industry is not a lump. industry is people. Industry today is Any survey of Western Australia's made up of a lot of individual environment over the past decade will industries run by individual people show some remarkable changes. Not all with individual views. And that has of them have been for the better- we been critical for the change that has have had some losses- but I believe occurred. that on balance we have achieved tremendous gains. Ten years ago Openness people living and working in Fremantle would have smelt the It also was critical for the Authority odours from the Kwinana industrial which had a new level of openness for a ~trip. The industrial pollution from Government agency. The Authority Kwinana was severe and real. And introduced a system in which almost all industrial risk at Kwinana was of the information the Authority had unacceptable. Asthmatics would not was available to the public (information have been able to visit Kalgoorlie such as the identity of people making without the risk posed by sulphur complaints or submissions is normally dioxide emitted from gold ore roasting confidential). This has had a huge operations. Even healthy people in impact on the integrity ~f the system. Kalgoorlie 10 years ago also faced the possibility of breathing problems. The goal was to introduce a new system Cockbum Sound was collapsing under that was fair. Fair in that everybody was the pressure of industrial and domestic treated the same. Not one set of rules effluent. Eighty per cent of the seagrass for government agencies and a different had died, the fish were poisoned. Peel set of rules for private industry. There Inlet was collapsing. Albany's harbours was resistance to this because some were going under. On yet another front, Government agencies believed that if with the exception of a few large you were part of Government then companies, the mining industry you were therefore doing something produced very poor levels of good and should not have to follow the rehabilitation. same rules. All this has now changed. It has Relationship changed for the better because society demanded it. Society had made Another goal was to introduce a the decision that it wanted system that would operate without development, and it wanted the fear or favour. For example, although environment to be protected. The the Authority makes only about four or approach to environmental five pollution prosecutions each year, protection embodied in the in the past five years, they have Environmental Protection Act of 1 included BP Refinery, KCGM (the 986 reflected society's changing largest gold mine in the State) and perception of itself. It was time to stop the State Energy Commission. Yet the regarding society as a mass, as a unit, working relationship between the as a lump. It was time to stop regarding Authority and these bodies is industry as a single mass. Industry is excellent. page 2 Annual Report 1992/1993 The approach to environmental be; and then to say this is how we, the protection in the past seven years also industry, are going to manage those recognised the rights of the public - all impacts. members of the public, industry and non~industry. They have the right to be There has been an overwhelming told about any development in which success story for new industries in they have an interest. They have the Western Australia from the point of right to be given information about that view of environmental protection. We development, and to have a say about need only consider the national and any development before any decisions international awards for are made. environmental protection that come to West Australian industry. The problem Aware has not been new industry because industry has done the job brilliantly. Industry in Western Australia is now The problems have been the old among the most environmentally aware industries- some industries at in the world. This is very different from Kwinana, Kalgoorlie and other places 10 years ago and it has. been achieved by were sub,standard and having far too treating industry as individuals; by much impact on the environment. The giving them a picture of environmental approach with old industries has been objectives industry should meet, and the same with the Authority saying on a then by requiring or helping industry to case;by,case basis to the individuals decide how it is going to meet the among those companies that this is the environmental objectives. The system environmental expectation and this is does not have Government or the the timetable to achieve that. It has Environmental Protection Authority been overwhelmingly successful. telling industry how to run its operations. That is left to the experts in We have not been successful all industry. the way- we have made some mistakes. There are some poignant During the late 1980s there was a examples. An application for open~cut major increase in industrial activity in coal mining in Mt Lesueur north of this State. It would not have been Perth went through a year and a half of possible in the early 1980s because of pain for the company and then the opposition from a community which in Authority recommended against it arid general thought industry was bad. No the Government then decided against new industry built since the middle of it. It is my belief that in today's society the 1980s has a reason to cause nobody would realistically believe you pollution and, with probably only two can have open~cut coal mining in an exceptions which seem to be area as rare and unique as that. That aberrations, no new industry has. does not mean you cannot have This has been achieved on a case~ underground coal mining; it does not by~case basis with every new industry mean you cannot access the resource. with the potential to affect the But the prospect of taking something environment being required to tell the that stands up in world stature and public what it is going to do; to say obliteratirig it is not realistic. W.e should what the environmental impact could have recommended "no" earlier. page 3 Environmental Protection Authority We have other bad news stories such as Constraints the development proposal at Bold Park. Bold Park is an area, part of which was Ten years ago, there were no real owned by the University of W A, whith constraints on living on top of Perth's was put up for sale despite it being in a Jandakot and Gnangara groundwater System 6 conservation area. The mounds, putting effluent into them, and Authority warned potential buyers that they could have been pumped such that they should not buy the land because it they were depleted beyond annual would cause trouble. But it was bought recharge. There is now a plan in place and even today the State is still that says groundwater will be protected grappling with the problem. forever. The rate of pumping that groundwater is controlled so that our There are also some successes, despite children and our children's children will some intense pressure. There is no have access to that water. beach in Western Australia- with the exception of one small beach in Albany The next area I want to discuss is -where it is unsafe to swim. In Kwinana. With the Authority's Western Australia our beaches are dean encouragement and help, industries and the Albany beach is about three such as BP, SECWA, Alcoa, Tiwest and quarters of the way through being others have come to a mutual cleaned up. Another example is the arrangement about how they are going Dawesville Channel, probably one of to protect the airshed of Kwinana. The the most adventurous environmental Authority worked out for them how rescue attempts in the world. much that air could absorb without causing pollution. The industries We have had some wins and losses with worked out how they were going to the Swan River- wins in that it is now share access and for some of them this virtually free of industrial pollution; has entailed spending big amounts of losses in that our repeated warnings money. The air at Kwinana is measured about urban and agricultural run,off are daily by the Authority and by industry yet to receive appropriate attention. and monitoring shows it is four times better now in quality than it was 10 In about 150 years of Western years ago. The number of industries in Australia's European development we Kwinana has doubled in the past 10 have filled in, drained, mined, reclaimed years and yet we still have not used up 80 per cent of the lakes of the Swan the environmental capacity of the area. Coastal Plain, despite their importance The State has a valuable asset in as the only permanent fresh water in the Kwinana that I believe has been South,West of the State. We now have rescued, made alive and made important in place an environmental protection for the future of the State. policy, fully supported by the community of the State, fully supported Industry's inputs of effluent to by landowners, farmers, and by Cockbum Sound are far below what Parliament that now makes it an offence they were in previous decades and to fill, drain, mine, or to release generally the Sound has stopped getting pollution into any of these lakes of the worse.