Industry, residential development and the environment can co-exist, according to EPA chair Paul Vogel.
WESTERN Australia is in the midst of a multi-billion dollar development phase, and Environmental Protection Authority chairman Paul Vogel is determined that ecological sustainability is given equal priority to prosperity.
In fact, Dr Vogel doesn’t believe development has to lead to environmental degradation.
“Why is it that prosperity and degradation go together, they shouldn’t,” he said.
“In assessing the impacts of development, there is always a tension between developers and conservationists. There doesn’t have to be, we should try and decouple increased prosperity from environmental degradation, that should be the goal.”
It may be the goal, but it is also the challenge, according to Dr Vogel, who said creating a strategic approach to environmental impact assessments – one of the EPA’s primary functions – was key.
He points to the process for selecting a site for an LNG processing hub in the Kimberley as an example; 40 sites were assessed. This number was whittled to 11 and then to four, when the EPA assessed the short list and advised that James Price Point would be most environmentally suitable for Woodside’s Browse LNG project.
The decision to locate the plant at James Price Point attracted community criticism and environmental activism, most recently with protestors holding their ground at the site to fend off initial works by Woodside.
“You have to accept that is the best site environmentally. People might argue about that, but the process was transparent and rigorous,” Dr Vogel told WA Business News.
“EPA was of the view that you are better off having one precinct where you can confine and constrain development to a known site where you understand what the impacts are or will be, rather than having a plethora of these things up and down the coast line of the state,” he said in explanation of part of the EPA’s strategic assessment.
Dr Vogel is pragmatic about development and has an obvious appreciation for the importance of finding middle ground between developers and conservationists.
“The world needs LNG as a fuel ... yes it is a controversial project, I am well aware of that,” he said.
“You are going to have some change in the environment there if you want to have LNG development.”
Dr Vogel said the EPA focused on finding the best position for projects of that ilk, assessing how well they were designed, whether they would operate to best practice, the level of understanding about the cumulative impacts of the projects on the ecosystem, not just individual flora and fauna, and how involved the community was in the decision making.
“You have got to have investment and you have to have development. For us it is about, ‘demonstrate that the development is ecologically sustainable’,” he said.
“How do you use, maintain and conserve those resources to improve the quality of life for citizens whilst maintaining ecological integrity.”
Dr Vogel said avoidance, mitigation and offsets of the environmental impacts of development such as James Price Point were key to ecological sustainability, but warned that offsetting – such as balancing degradation of one area by bolstering environmental growth of another – should be used as a last resort.
“If we continue just to develop and not try to at least have avoidance, mitigation and offsets, we will continue to erode environmental values over time,” he said.
Battle of the bulge
The Browse project is an example of the passions aroused when projects introduce industry into a new environment.
The community response in the case of Browse was comparable with that regarding the recent proposal by New South Wales-based LD Operations to develop a coalmine in Margaret River.
In May, the EPA advised that LD Operations’ application to establish the mine 15 kilometres from Margaret River should be rejected and that it should not go to the full public environmental review stage.
That decision was made on the grounds that, regardless of probability, any incident would place large, widespread and irreversible risk on the region’s environment with the largest concern over the risk to the critical water supply – the Leederville aquifer.
LD Operations is currently appealing that decision but Dr Vogel stands by the EPA’s recommendation.
The EPA was criticised for making a decision prior to receiving the full extent of information on the project from LD Operations, but Dr Vogel said the EPA was well within its rights to make decisions based on its extensive experience with similar projects and on the ‘precautionary principle’.
“We could not see how you could manage some risk events, as uncertain as they might be, we could not see how you could manage that without having a catastrophic consequence,” he said.
“Likelihood might be low, but the consequence is catastrophic.”
The encroachment of residential development on industry has become another battleground for the EPA and Dr Vogel, largely due to air quality control and associated health effects.
The City of Rockingham’s application to rezone the air quality buffer zone around the Kwinana industrial area to allow for high-density residential development is one recent example.
Dr Vogel said buffers were an integral element in controlling air quality, alongside cooperative management arrangements between government and industry.
“You lose the buffers and you are saying, ‘it doesn’t matter, we will just let people live wherever they want to, right up to the boundaries of industry’,” he said.
“We will have one hell of a problem, not so much with complaints, but people’s health will be affected.
“That is why we have the buffers, to reduce the risk of developers and local governments encroaching on those things for economic gain without understanding what you are exposing the community to when you put them in there.”
The Kwinana Industries Council and Dr Vogel both warned residential development of the site would attract similar issues with air quality control to those resulting from residential encroachment on the Cockburn Cement industrial site.
“The EPA would have the view that a high-density residential development in the buffer is inappropriate and it would end in tears,” Dr Vogel said.
“There is already a parliamentary enquiry into development in the buffer and impacts from Cockburn Cement, why would we want to perpetuate that problem?”
In responding to comments made by Dr Vogel, and reported by WA Business News last week, Cockburn Cement largely agreed with his assessment.
“Dr Vogel has drawn a direct link between a proposal by the City of Rockingham to rezone 20 hectares of land for high-density living and the environmental issues being experienced by Cockburn Cement and its neighbouring communities at the northern end of the KIA as a result of residential encroachment on the Munster Cement and Lime Operations,” Cockburn Cement said in a statement.
“In the past decade several thousand new homes have been built in and around Beeliar near the Munster Cement and Lime Operations. As a result there are long-term challenges reconciling Cockburn Cement’s ability to effectively run its operations while achieving an appropriate level of amenity for residents.
“Governments must learn from the experiences of Cockburn Cement and residents in Munster and Beeliar and establish and preserve appropriate buffer zones around major industry.”
