The Environmental Legislation Amendment (Hazardous Chemicals) Bill 2023 actions included amending largely the POEO Act to:

• Control the making and use of listed chemicals under the Commonwealth register under the Industrial Chemicals Environmental Management (Register) Act 2021 of the Commonwealth into the NSW Industrial Chemicals Environmental Management Standard (IChEMS) register,
• Permit the EPA enabled to publish chemical use notices covering IChEMS chemicals requiring users to provide with and offences relating to compliance.
• Transfer the powers and repeal the Environmentally Hazardous Chemicals Act 1985, including the Chemical Control Orders to the POEO Act
• Other amendments

ASBG's submission welcomed the Bill in general with a few issues including;

• Avoidance of duplication - a general issue with many environmental issues
• Clear advice to likely affected businesses and organisations with a period of grace for implementation
• Variation between Commonwealth and NSW IChEMS registry and consultation in proportion to the impact before being gazetted as a chemical use notice.
• EPA assessment of management technologies used for industrial chemicals at a fee is voluntary. However, to gain other governmental approvals, such as planning consents etc, are likely to require such assessment.  The issue  is the definition of industrial chemicals is considered far too broad applying to most chemicals used in industry.  Consequently, industrial chemicals should be ring fenced to ‘industrial chemical listed in the NSW IChEMS register or under a chemical use notice'.

Attachments:

ASBG Submission on the Environmental Hazardous Chemicals Bill 2023

886 kB

Overall this submission is more about non-STP biological sludges than biosolids. The term biosolids is exclusively defined and reserved for sewage treatment plant, or STP biological sludges. 
Many industrial biological systems produce similar however, biosolids from non-Sewage Treatment Plants (STP) can have similar, worse or better environmental characteristics than biosolids from STPs.
ASBG calls for a more consistent method to regulating biological sludges and allow them similar outcomes to those applied to biosolids where applicable.
In particular, ASBG calls for a less stringent assessment process for these sludges than the current Specific Resource Recovery Order and Exemption application process. 
Where biological sludges have similar or better properties than biosolids then they should be permitted to use the Biosolids Resource Recovery Order and Exemption based on the Biosolids Guidelines.

Attachments:

ASBG Submission on the NSW Biosolids Regulatory Review

879 kB

ASBG made two points, with the first being by far the main one:

In the Position Statement the term onsite was used often.  However, the submission  ASBG's Submission on the On-Site / Off-Site Rule - 2019 was prepared due to the differing meanings, positions and enforcement by the waste branch and the enforcement or inspector branch of the EPA.  As the Position Statement relied very heavily on the interpretation of what is an onsite ‘waste’ material vs and offsite waste material.  Putting it simply the onsite material is covered under the Contaminated Land Management and legislation, whereas offsite waste is covered under waste legislation which is far more stringent.  ASBG again recommended that, as promised in 2019 and was promised that Guidelines would be produced by the EPA to clarify what is considered onsite and offsite, called the onsite/offsite rule.
The other issue was the level of expertise on asbestos risk management by certified contaminated land consultants.  Most have if but a few don’t and may require additional expertise

Attachments:

ASBG Submission on Asbestos Contaminated Soils

845 kB

ASBG's submission on the EPA's Climate Change Action Plan and Policy required clarification.  Would the EPA rigorously stick with the NSW Net Zero targets regardless :

•     Of the transition to a net zero end point, as a rough high cost path would cause financial difficulties on EPL holders within a competitive market?
•     And ignore competitive products and their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Intensity where EPLs are made less competitive or close enabling NSW to actually increase GHG globally?
•     Also ignoring the likely price increases and supply unreliability associated with Eraring's closure in 2025?

Or work with NSW EPLs to assist and oversea their progress towards a low to zero GHG product intensity where competitive products are considered along with transitional difficulties NSW experiences in its electricity grid.

Obviously ASBG recommended that EPA consider these issue and work with, rather than against NSW EPL holders. Noting that as EPLs under NGERs etc are exempt from GHG EPL controls this largely leaves EPL holders who have product competition in the NSW market.  In addition ASBG recommended:

• Duplication of GHG emissions, performance, future plans etc, be avoided with use of existing documentation over EPA variations.
• Use of EPL conditions to control GHG be limited to only those who are laggards - have no reasonable economic or technical excuse to reduce GHG.
• Load Based Licensing not be used to ensure NSW EPL's help NSW achieve its Net Zero targets, or other criteria
• Adaptation to deal with pollution incidents resulting from climate change bad weather events, be limited to ad-hoc changes to existing sites, and only use increased weather related design criteria (i.e. 1 in 100 yr rain events) if this applies across all new sites under the planning system.

Attachments:

ASBG Submission on Climate Change Action Plan 2022

1196 kB