Regulatory Action

EPA prosecutions result in record penalties The EPA has a new record, with the court’s imposing over $2.4 million in penalties for prosecutions brought by the EPA in the past financial year for environmental crimes.

This figure was well above the previous record of $1.722 million set in the previous 2015-16 financial year.

The EPA has also recorded a 90% success rate in prosecutions with some of the significant fines to be issued in the past 12 months including:

A $530 000 penalty notice to Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific Pty Ltd for allowing toxic wastewater to waterlog a field and kill five cattle in Warkworth
A $850 000 fine to Caltex for a petrol fountain that sent three people to hospital and caused evacuations and road closures
A $100 000 fine to Elf Farms for polluting South Creek
A $270 000 fine to Better Drums & Osman-Kerim for a toxic chemical discharge.

The table below shows a detailed breakdown of the EPA penalties enforced and environmental program funding awarded by the courts for the period May 1 to July 31 2017.

Regulatory action from May 1 to July 31 2017

REGULATORY ACTION 2016-17	TOTAL
Inspections undertaken	1184
Prevention Notices issued	15
Clean Up Actions issued	53
Penalty Notices issued	130
Smokey Vehicle Infringement Notices issued	8
Noisy Vehicle Infringement Notices issued	82
Infringement Notice for Littering from a motor vehicle issued	3709
Environmental Programs
Environmental Improvement Programs commenced(1)	$592K
Pollution Reduction Programs commenced (21)	$41.6M
Other Environmental Programs commenced (8)	$6.75M
Environmental programs total worth	$48.94M
Prosecutions
Prosecutions commenced	51
Prosecutions completed	38
Total financial penalties imposed	$2,085,770