Environmental Protection Act Queensland

A Quick Guide
to the
Environmental Protection Act Qld

The Environmental Protection Act (1994) is primarily concerned with environmental pollution. While the legislation has an extremely broad objective "to achieve ecologically sustainable development in Queensland" in practice the legislation concentrates primarily on point-source pollution and land contamination. This is partly due to the existence of a range of other legislation (most notably the Nature Conservation Act) which deals with protection of other aspects of the environment.

The EP Act seeks to achieve its objective by setting out a program for the identification and protection of important elements of the environment (environmental values) and by creating a range of regulatory tools for controlling the activities of individuals or companies. The Act was also originally intended to provide public notification and appeal rights for proposed developments which have the potential to harm the environment. For a number of reasons, these public involvement provisions were never proclaimed. There are now some opportunities for public involvement under the Integrated Planning Act although it is unclear what licences will fall under these provisions.