Overview of Environmental Protection Act (EPA)
Environmental Protection Act (EPA), is a great legal implementation of the Government of Queensland, Australia. This is a tremendous legal step in overcoming all the challenges of environmental pollutions such as air pollution from industries, carbon footprint maintenance, and others (Vivoda and Fulcher, 2017, p. 6). Waste management along with the contaminated land management system is included under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Act (1996), Queensland, Australia. In Australia, the Governmental framework is robust to make the environment a pollution free system. In this aspect, there is the primary state level and territory level authoritative body to regulate this law. The Commonwealth government is here as the highest regulatory body to implement this act to protect the environment. According to this act, every year environmental audit is also commenced here which is regulated primarily the local and territory body and all of these reports, including domestic and industrial are finally reported and regulated by the highest governmental body. In New South Wales, the environmental protection Act is also very active. Along with Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria and many others provinces of Australia. In a broad aspect, this environmental protection act is very much active along with the political implications. Sometimes, states and provinces have some separate models also where the government is also reviewing all of the articles and files of the law. Environmental protection act is highly implemented at the Commonwealth level. It involves commonwealth bodies. In New South Wales, this environmental legislation is modified into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999), or EPBC Act. The Department of Environment and Energy entirely governs all of these regulations and legal implications (DOE). In NSW, these legal systems are highly developed and all of the persons are hereby concerned to abide by these environmental laws where any kinds of depreciation from this law regarding environment, land use, carbon emission or others may lead the citizens towards imprisonment, cancellation of business licenses and the organization will be subject to the notice issuance or others. Here all kinds of offenders, there are three divisions which are tier-1, tier-2 and tier-3 along with their punishment money of $1 Million for corporation offices, $250,00 and $50,000 respectively. Commonwealth bodies are always present NSW to observe the maintenance of the EPA. EPA is protected by local, state and highest government through their actions of mitigation of environmental issues, and they are always present to mitigate all environmental issues in a therapeutic method. Sometimes, public contraventions are also made by those bodies to protect environmental pollutions. Most of the EPA implementation related activities are performed by Non-Governmental Offices, on the other hand, this NGO’s have the power to make decisions for environmental challenges in NSW. In NSW, the Coal serum gas challenge was a worldly concern, where NGO has performed a great deal to mitigate this issue adequately. NSW based NGO’s are highly concerned to follow EPA in every place and to mitigate all the problems related to the land clearance, stopping the harmful emission of gasses, water, and climate change related issues along with all the carbon footprint related issues occurred in the mine related areas.
State Environment Protection and Planning (SEPP) in Victoria, Australia
State environment protection and planning (SEPP) is mainly implemented in Victoria, Australia to prevent the abuses and pollution of waters. SEPP hs provided a significant step to the people of Victoria, Australia, in this that, in Victoria, Australia, water is a scarce thing. As a result, the sustainable utilization of water is highly crucial in Victoria. In this aspect, SEPP has provided the blueprint of utilization procedure that what procedure of utilization can help the people to use water for the long term in a sustainable manner. To utilize the water sustainably, the essential thing is the socio-economic and cultural quality of peoples. Through the formation of the blueprint of water utilization, SEPP has provided a goal post to the people of Victoria, what should be the amount of water used, how it can be recycled and what amount should be stored for a long time span for the future utilization. In this aspect, social awareness is highly essential which was wholly looked after by the association of NGO. Ngo’S has made enormous campaigning for the people awareness which makes people aware that how they can protect waterbodies through its sustainable utilization. SEPP along with NG guidance has provided a clear base of safety net based guidance for water utilization and not go through any kinds of discharged material to the water body. SEPP has another crucial significance because SEPP becomes active with its statistical tools which have provided great safeguards to the EPA implementation also (Schmidt, 2017, p.8).
In the preliminary level, SEPP was implemented to guide people about the source of discharge in 1988, but along with new agenda of environmental protection, it has come to an end that, people, business communities, industrialists and other peoples to protect all environmental resources including the areas of catchment and coastal area. On the other hand, SEPP s now implemented in Victoria and NSW with its agenda where it is guided the people that how people of this area can utilize the natural resources for their own lives without making any harmful activities to nature or environment also. Above all, SEPP has provided the Victoria people the safety framework to use water and other natural resources sustainably; through maintenance of the sustainable framework, the situation becomes more effective within a 10-year time frame. SEPP has provided the attainment program also where people come to about the beneficial uses of all natural resources and can make the Victoria and other water bodies protected from all kinds of environmental damage or problems.
Role of SEPP in sustainable water utilization
Implementation of SEPP has saved the natural water bodies and other resources in such a way that all the ecological aspects of Vitoria and NSW based water bodies become fully conserved. The beneficial utilization of SEPP has helped all the ecological systems including the aquatic ecosystems, water-based creatures and make them ready for recreational aspect and economic value, and above all make the water body ready to catch fishes, mollusks and other animals from the catchment area which provides a great source of employment also the people of Victoria.
Local environmental planning is the decision-making planning tool which is developed by the local planning authoritative bodies to make the sustainable utilization of land zones and maintenance of the developmental standards. In NSW it is a mandated rule to maintain an LEP, to make the sustainable maintenance of land zones and other natural resources without any harmful activities. After formation of the planning, the entire plan is completed by the Minister for the planning of environmental resources. All of these planning got their approvals through the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, along with its related legal regulations. This LEP has the main activity to provide local environmental plans, through the draft Development Control Plan 2008 which will be activated for ten weeks. In 2004, 30th September, this planning authority has taken the step where planning procedures are reformed by SEPP and Regional Environmental plans (REP). In these drafts, the planning are implemented in the entire area of Victoria and NSW (Studdert and Glanville, 2017, p.6).
On the other hand, this LEP is responsible for all of the activities of Lower Hunter strategies also. In this aspect, it provides the new homes for near about 11500 peoples. It plans the 66,000 new employment sources. On the other hand, this source is vibrant for the Urban development planning. LEP has provided more than 12,000 hector land utilization plan also. Above all, this lower hunter committee is responsible for the maintenance of lower catchment area and other area-based water utilization procedure also.
From all of these aspects, LEP is an excellent step in NSW to create a planned way for sustainable utilization of natural resources and all.
NCC provides the way of sustainable construction of buildings in the area of NSW. In the primary level, it has the responsibility to look after the construction procedure of 2 to 9 floored buildings in Australia, NSW. Mainly in this classes, all of the commercial houses industrial structures and factories are included. On the other hand, NCC 2 is mainly implemented for the class 1 and ten where the corporate houses are mainly included (James et al., 2017, p. 145). NCC type 3 regulates the water usage and drainage related activities. In one sentence, the consolidated requirement of NCC is to look after every kind of construction, plumbing, after drainage and building related fields. NCC is a code which is dependent on the performance. This performance-based code is mainly utilized by architects, plumbers, construction builders and all kinds of consultants related to the hydraulic system. NCC provides a systematic frame working procedure to all of the construction builders and others where the wastage materials will be decidedly less in amount. NCC has the power also to enact the legal effects with the help of Territory building control and plumbing legislation authorities (Douglas and He, 2017, P. 158).
Implementation of SEPP in Victoria and New South Wales
Bushfires are the event in Australia mainly occurs in the warmer sessions in the year. Mainly the hot and dry climate is responsible for it. NSW is under the threat of bushfires from its coastal territories. This bushfire controlling activities are measured under four standers of tools which are discussed below.
AS 3959 is a significant standard of the bushfire prevention were protection is amended for the household area in bushfire prone zone. According to the Bushfire assessment Level, this standard is always provided to the people. This AS 3959 standard is mainly provided to quiet area based people after getting the report from Bushfire Attack level. There is an enormous level of bushfire attack including BAL 19, 29, 40 and others which destruct the venture area along with vegetative lands, natural resources, and others. For that reason maintenance of this standard is a very crucial thing the building owners or other dwellers.
Bushfire standard 1530.8.1 is the standard which developed by the prevailing standard of Australia and New Zealand. After doing planning with representatives of both of these countries, it is found to be present that, before the building of construction it is crucial to maintaining some method which is included in the standard guidelines to protect buildings from Bushfire. This standard has the recommendations and guidelines which are very crucial for the house building planning times. For that reason after maintenance of guidelines house are becomes bushfire related attack proof (Delany et al., 2017, p. 260).
Bushfire standard 1530.8.2 is the standard where all the buildings are constructed with such a design or planning that houses become get the power to protect the front face of home from hot or infringement of fire during the bushfire. The standard has the scope to assess the fire hazard related resistance power also.
In the standard systems of AS 5414, there is the implementation of water spraying system to the houses during the bushfire attacking. In this aspect, the houses become able to resist all the heat and fire-related damages also. It includes the amber attacks along with some exposure to the fire also. According to the NSW government, any certification of the AS5414 system helps a house to get the assistance of Government authorities through their water spraying systems along with getting some evaluation test and financial help also (O’Connor, 2017, p. 14).
It is the system of project development where the comprehensive structure of nutrient is also provided to the youth housing (Cole et al., 2017, p. 462). It is the system where nutritional foods are supplied to the young workers to maintain the human resources also (Low et al., 2017, p. 33).
PBP provides the collection of best practices which helps to develop some framework in the bushfire pone areas to develop their strategy to fight against bushfire. NSW planning law highly supports the systems of pbp (Little 2017, p.75). This system of PBP has the aim to provide protective arms to the human being, and it has a significant impact to reduce the amount of life danger and damages from bushfire related activities.
References:
Cole, R., Devanur, N., Gkatzelis, V., Jain, K., Mai, T., Vazirani, V.V. and Yazdanbod, S., 2017, June. Convex program duality, Fisher markets, and Nash social welfare. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation(pp. 459-460). ACM.
Delany, J., Boverman, D. and Matthews, S., 2017. Short fire runs: Assessing bush fire risk from small areas of vegetation. In Fire Safety Engineering Stream Conference: Quantification of Fire Safety: Fire Australia 2017 (p. 260). Engineers Australia.
Douglas, G. and He, Y., 2017. Moving forward on a verification method for bushfire protection under the National Construction Code. In Fire Safety Engineering Stream Conference: Quantification of Fire Safety: Fire Australia 2017 (p. 158). Engineers Australia.
James, M., Ambrose, M., Lane, B. and Wright, A., 2017. The NatHERS dataset: An exploration of its content, provenance, and usefulness in the characterization of new residential building. Energy Procedia, 121, pp.142-149.
Little, S.J., 2017. Exploring the Tensions between Bushfire Protection and Biodiversity Conservation in the New South Wales Planning System, 34 (5), p. 67-80.
Low, S., K. Butler-Henderson, and R. Nash. “Balancing shifting priorities and leading collaborative outcomes-Transversal leadership for the 21st century health professional.” In 10th Health Services and Policy Research Conference: Shifting priorities: balancing acute and primary care services, p. 33. 2017.
O’Connor, T., 2017. Performance-based solutions to bushfire protection. Planning News, 43(8), p.14.
Schmidt, R., 2017. (17-026) Cumberland council v badaoui habib [2017] NSWLEC 18. Environmental Law Reporter, 36(17-021/17-026), p.8.
Studdert, J. and Glanville, K., 2017. Proposed NSW planning reforms promise’simpler, faster planning’. Australian Environmental Law Digest, 4(1), p.6.
Vivoda, V. and Fulcher, J., 2017. Mine Waste Classification and Management (No. Mining Legislation Reform Initiative, Working Paper No. 1, pp. 1-7). Mining Legislation Reform Initiative, AUA Center for Responsible Mining.