Meeting environmental authority conditions

Your environmental authority (EA) will contain conditions that you must comply with. These conditions will generally state what is permitted as part of your EA's activity.

The conditions of your EA will relate to the operation of the Environmentally Relevant Activity (ERA) and, in some instances, may also cover rehabilitation requirements.

There may also be a need for a condition to expressly prohibit an action based on the level of environment risk posed by the activity or if a 'no release' requirement is necessary. For example, contaminants must not be released to land.

Your EA may include conditions from a code of environmental compliance or ERA standard. You can find copies of these conditions in the following documents:

Prescribed ERAs

Codes of environmental compliance (eligibility criteria and standard conditions)

• Superseded code of environmental compliance: ERA 16 – Extractive and screening activities (Version 6) (ESR/2015/1568) (PDF, 120KB) – for approvals applied for prior to 9 November 2012
• Superseded code of environmental compliance: ERA 16 – Extractive and screening activities (Version 7) (ESR/2015/1761) (PDF, 145KB) – for approvals applied for in the period 9 November 2012 to 5 December 2013
• Superseded code of environmental compliance: ERA 57 – Regulated waste transport (Version 3) (ESR/2015/1630) (PDF, 200KB) – for approvals applied for prior to 9 November 2012
• Superseded code of environmental compliance: ERA 57 – Regulated waste transport (Version 4) (ESR/2015/1670) (PDF, 623KB) – for approvals applied for in the period 9 November 2012 to 28 June 2018

ERA standards (eligibility criteria and standard conditions) for approvals from 6 December 2013 to 29 September 2015

• ERA 2(1)(a) – Intensive animal feedlotting >150 to 1000 standard cattle units – for approvals (PDF, 810KB)
• ERA 2(2)(a) – Intensive animal feedlotting >1000 to 10,000 standard sheep units (PDF, 810KB)
• ERA 3(1) – Keeping >400 to 3500 standard pig units (PDF, 810KB)
• ERA 4(1) – Poultry farming >1000 to 200,000 birds (PDF, 810KB)
• ERA 7(1) – Chemical manufacturing >200 cubic metres of water based paint in a year (PDF, 808KB)
• ERA 7(3)(a) – Chemical manufacturing >200 tonnes of soap, surfactants or cleaning or toiletry products in a year (PDF, 808KB)
• ERA 13(2) – Retreading tyres (PDF, 732KB)
• ERA 16(2)(a) – Extracting 5000 to 100,000 tonnes of material in a year (PDF, 817KB)
• ERA 16(3)(a) – Screening 5000 to 100,000 tonnes of material in a year (PDF, 814KB)
• ERA 16(3)(b) – Screening >100,000 to 1 million tonnes of material in a year (PDF, 810KB)
• ERA 16(3)(c) – Screening > 1 million tonnes of material in a year (PDF, 811KB)
• ERA 23 – Bottling or canning 200 tonnes or more of food in a year (PDF, 813KB)
• ERA 25(1)(a) – Meat processing, not including rendering, 1000 to 5000 tonnes of meat or meat products in a year (PDF, 814KB)
• ERA 25(2)(a) – Meat processing, including rendering, 1000 to 5000 tonnes of meat or meat products in a year (PDF, 814KB)
• ERA 26 – Milk processing (PDF, 813KB)
• ERA 29(2) – Metal foundry, producing 50 tonnes or more of non-ferrous metal castings using permanent moulds in a year (PDF, 810KB)
• ERA 38(2) – Surface coating, painting or powder coating using >100 tonnes of surface coating materials in a year (PDF, 808KB)
• ERA 59 – Tyre recycling (PDF, 808KB)
• ERA 63(1)(a)(i) – Sewage treatment works with total daily peak design capacity of 21 to 100 equivalent persons if treated effluent is discharged through an irrigation scheme (PDF, 817KB)

Repealed ERA standard (eligibility criteria and standard conditions) for approvals from 29 September 2015 to 30 June 2019

• ERA 59 – Tyre recycling (ESR/2015/1698) (PDF, 489KB)

Superseded ERA standard (eligibility criteria and standard conditions) for approvals from 29 June 2018 to 30 June 2019

• ERA 57 – Regulated waste transport (ESR/2018/4202) (PDF, 462KB)

These conditions do not apply for new EA applications for these activities.

You can read the eligibility criteria and standard conditions for new operations.

Requirement to complete a work diary

If you operate a mobile and temporary environmentally relevant activity (ERA), other than regulated waste transport, you are required to maintain a work diary. You must:

• use the approved form for a work diary (DOCX, 139KB)
• keep the work diary records for 2 years after the last entry
• inform the administering authority within 7 days of the work diary being lost or stolen
• record the information required in the work diary for each location within 1 day of leaving the location.

Enforcement of environmental obligations

To ensure that operators comply with their EA, and do not cause unlawful environmental harm, the Environmental Protection Act 1994 provides a range of tools to help your administering authority enforce environmental obligations. These include:

• environmental protection orders
• environmental evaluations
• transitional environmental programs
• penalty infringement notices.

If the Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation is your administering authority, you can find more information on the range of compliance actions and management tools in the department's compliance and enforcement guideline (ESR/2016/2514) (PDF, 687KB).

Transitional environmental programs

A transitional environmental program (TEP) is a specific program that sets out actions, requirements and conditions in relation to a particular activity, that would otherwise contravene the Act. When complied with, an approved TEP achieves compliance with the Act, by doing 1 or more of the following:

• reducing environmental harm caused by the activity
• detailing the transition of the activity to an environmental standard
• detailing the transition of the activity to comply with
• a condition of an environmental authority (EA), whether it is standard or site specific
• or
• a development condition
• or
• a prescribed condition for carrying out a small scale mining activity
• or
• an agricultural ERA standard that applies to an agricultural ERA.

For more information, visit compliance guidelines.

Also consider...

• Find out how to apply for an EA.
• Find out how to change, combine or transfer an EA.
• Find out how to surrender or suspend an EA.