With the NSW government set to release its report this week into the hexavalent chromium leak near Stockton in Newcastle, a study by the Total Environment Centre has found dozens more breaches, including many that had gone unreported by companies until they were picked up by government audits.

It says the system of monitoring is ”dysfunctional”.

The government said it had a rigorous program of inspections at industrial sites. Most breaches of environmental protection licences – which set permitted pollution levels and require companies to monitor and report on any discharges – resulted in minimal environmental damage.

But the Total Environment Centre found no improvement in areas such as the storage of chlorinated solvents, which have been used in making products as diverse as pesticides, Teflon and electrical insulation, despite many problems being identified in previous audits.

The management of dust from coal mines also led to frequent, sometimes unreported, breaches of environmental licence conditions and showed little improvement between an audit in 2005 and 2010.

”The remedial measures instituted by the department were ineffective,” the director of the Total Environment Centre, Jeff Angel, said.

”It appears that far from protecting the community’s interests, the department and its licences are seen as token pieces of paper, and bad practice often continues unchecked,” Mr Angel said.

“Given the large range of non-compliances that were found in the various reviews and clearly not reported to the department over a number of years – the estimate of incidents of environmental harm that would have occurred and were also not reported must be significant.”

The Office of Environment and Heritage did not comment on its estimate of the proportion of licence breaches that go unreported.

In a statement, the department said it had made 264 inspections in the Hunter region in the last financial year, resulting in 44 penalty notices for licence breaches with total fines of $75,210.

”In addition, 53 pollution reduction programs were placed on companies [which are] designed to improve their environmental performance and 16 penalty notices with fines of $1500 each were issued to local mines and quarries for infringements such as pollution of waters and breaking noise licence conditions.”

A major program to reduce dust and particles from coal mines has begun, with nine mines subject to legally-binding pollution reduction programs and all 68 of the state’s coal mines to be part of the scheme by next April.

”The recent audit program across a number of industries that examined chemical storage and management of chlorinated solvents provided good information which [the office] will use in improving chemical storage practices – such as providing more training and guidance to industry,” it said.

Other environment groups also said the current licensing system was flawed and allowed a culture of routine minor licence breaches that had a cumulative effect.

The state government received a report last week by the former director-general of the NSW Premier’s Department, Brendan O’Reilly, into the handling of the August 8 Orica leak at Kooragang Island.

It will be considered by cabinet today and the findings may be released tomorrow. They are understood to include a recommendation that the state government tighten rules around the reporting of licence breaches.

The report will say that Orica took 16 hours to warn local environment authorities about the potentially toxic plume of hexavalent chromium that reached the suburb of Stockton and more than 42 hours to advise NSW Health of the risks.

Prompted by the Orica chemcial leak, the government will today launch the biggest environmental audit in NSW history, targeting more than 40 potentially toxic industrial sites in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong.

The Environment Minister, Robyn Parker, said the audit was the first stage in a process likely to lead to tougher controls, including more monitoring and bigger fines.

Among the sites in Sydney to face immediate audits and spot checks are the Orica plant at Matraville, which is leaking mercury to Botany Bay, the Shell and Caltex refineries at Rose Hill and Kurnell, the ELGAS and Origin bulk shipping storage areas at Port Botany and the Toll North waste storage facility at Arndell Park.

The BlueScope Steel coke plant at Port Kembla and the Incitec Pivot chemical production plant on Kooragang Island at Newcastle also face audits.

Ms Parker said the audits would focus on the management of risks and the adequacy of emergency response procedures. “The [Environment Office] will not hesitate to issue penalty notices and fines during inspections. Pollution reduction programs, clean-up notices and stopwork orders may also be issued and in cases where serious breaches of the legislation are identified, the [office] will consider use of all its regulatory tools, including prosecution action and licence suspensions.”

Several of the sites have repeatedly breached their environmental protection licences during the past five years.

The government said it could lead to changes in the system of environmental protection licences, which has been criticised for not making businesses reduce toxic emissions as long as they report non-compliance incidents. The opposition said it would support legislative changes to tighten the licences.

More compliance staff have been appointed at the agency and the first audits will be completed by mid-December. A final report on the biggest risks will be given to the government in February.

Ms Parker said the move had been sparked by the Orica chemical leak of August 8, when a carcinogenic cloud of hexavalent chromium released from a Kooragang Island plant drifted across the Newcastle suburb of Stockton.

Although later tests showed the risk to human health was very low, it took three days to notify the public of the incident. Orica and the government have faced questions about the adequacy of their emergency plans.

The hexavalent chromium was also removed and stored in an open-air tank at Homebush for six days after the leak.

Two inquiries, one by the former senior public servant Brendan O’Reilly and one initiated by the upper house, have since been launched.

The opposition spokesman on the environment, Luke Foley, said the government had been playing ”catch-up” but the audit was a step forward.

Negotiations are continuing between the government and BHP Billiton subsidiary Illawarra Coal, which holds one of several mining leases that cover the area to become Dharawal National Park, near Campbelltown.

Neither party would comment on the sensitive issue of whether compensation would have to be paid from public funds to secure the pristine wilderness. But funding was set aside for the establishment of Dharawal National Park in the state budget, effectively locking out mining, which is banned in almost all of the state’s national parks. An allocation of less than $1 million will be used for building of walking tracks and putting up signs.

The government confirmed yesterday it planned to gazette the park to ”the centre of the earth”, which would kill Illawarra Coal’s proposal to extract up to $40 billion worth of coal from the Bulli seam.

”While negotiations are continuing, it is the government’s intention that Dharawal National Park will not be reserved with a depth restriction,” said a spokeswoman for the Environment Minister, Robyn Parker. ”In this way, this special area will be protected to the ‘centre of the earth’ in perpetuity.”

BHP Billiton said its proposal for mining beneath Dharawal was still being considered by the state government, despite the national park pledge.

”Illawarra Coal continues to focus on the resolution of our Bulli Seam Operations Project application currently before government,” a BHP Billiton spokeswoman said. ”It has involved an extensive process and, if approved, will provide security for all who work at our Appin and West Cliff operations.”

Confidential advice from the previous state environment department, obtained by the Herald earlier this year, show active mining leases overlapping the proposed park zone. It said special legislation might be required to extinguish existing mining leases, and added: ”Compensation issues between government and industry would need to be resolved.”

The Dharawal conservation area, covering about 6200 hectares of bushland, is considered particularly vulnerable to mining because it contains hundreds of upland swamps that filter clean water down into the Sydney drinking water catchment.

Mining in nearby areas has led to subsidence and surface cracking, including causing a river to run dry after the bedrock beneath it split.

THE company responsible for the Newcastle chemical leak has admitted that an attempt to clean up toxic mercury from a site near Botany Bay, in Sydney, is not working.

Orica has suspended mercury remediation works at an industrial site at Matraville after the technology it was using was too slow in removing the substance from the soil.

The chief executive, Graeme Liebelt, yesterday apologised for an incident in the Hunter on August 8 in which low levels of hexavalent chromium were sprayed but did not concede that the 16 hours it took to report the incident to the government was too long.

The Premier, Barry O’Farrell, has ordered an environmental audit of the Kooragang Island plant after the August 8 leak and an arsenic leak into the Hunter River on August 19, and an inquiry by the former director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Brendan O’Reilly. The upper house has called for a parliamentary inquiry with public hearings.

The company discovered mercury several years ago in the soil and groundwater beneath the former chloralkali plant at Botany industrial park in Sydney, which operated between 1945 and 2002. Mercury entered the soil via leaking pipes.

Orica agreed to remediate the mercury using soil-washing technology, which began in May and was due to be finished on September 30.

A spokeswoman said the technology had not been reliable and Orica had suspended the work.

A spokeswoman for the Office of Environment and Heritage said it had been in discussions with the company and would negotiate an extension to the deadline.

”We’re hoping they’ll come back to us with a better option as quickly as they can to get this operation back on track,” she said.

Jeff Angel of the Total Environment Centre said the remediation was essential because mercury was a serious toxin.

”Clearly they’ve been unable to get on top of it,” he said, ”but it’s essential they do because groundwater travels.”

In 2008 Orica admitted that the clean-up of a plume of various highly toxic chemicals at Port Botany would take more than a century to complete.

The Orica spokeswoman said the company remained committed to the remediation agreed with the NSW Environment Protection Authority.

Mr Liebelt said that although non-compliance was unacceptable, his company was a good corporate citizen.

”Orica is a very responsible company. We have very robust systems in place for dealing with our safety, health and environmental performance,” he said.

Clean-up crews and trucks from Hunter’s Mainstream Industries were out in force yesterday as residents remained concerned about the potential health impacts of the chromium cloud that was blown over Stockton last Monday.

The Herald was told by health officials yesterday that as much as 10 kilograms of the potentially carcinogenic hexavalent chromium – chromium six – material was accidentally released into the atmosphere in the half-hour or so before the problem was noticed.

Workcover NSW is investigating the incident and the part of the Orica plant involved in the chromium release has been shut by state government environmental inspectors.

The company did not inform the Office of Environment and Heritage until 16 hours later, on Tuesday morning.

The NSW Environment Minister, Robyn Parker, has since announced a ”full and independent” review into the incident that affected 70 homes and closed a childcare centre.

An environmental claims lawyer, Rebecca Jancauskas of Shine Lawyers, confirmed yesterday the firm was speaking to three affected families in relation to the potential class action.

In addition to compensation for the health impacts of exposure to the chemical, the action could also seek damages for ”stigma and blight” and a potential drop in property values as a result.

Ms Brockovich, who campaigned about the dangers of hexavalent chromium in the US, was informed about the Stockton incident on the weekend. The NSW Department of Health said that tests have found that ”very low” levels of cancerous chemicals leaked from the plant and that there is no health risk to the residents.

The United National Environment Programme (UNEP) analysed the damage oil pollution has done in Ogoniland, a region in the oil-rich labyrinthine creeks, swamps and waterways of the Niger Delta, the heartland of Africa’s largest oil and gas industry.

Royal Dutch Shell and the Nigerian state-oil firm own most of the oil infrastructure in Ogoniland, although the Anglo-Dutch giant was forced out of operating in the region by communities in 1993 who said it caused pollution that destroyed their fishing environment.

Shell stopped pumping oil from Ogoniland after a campaign, led by writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was later hanged by the Nigerian military government, provoking international outrage.

“The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world’s most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken,” a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report released on Thursday said.

“Control and maintenance of oilfield infrastructure in Ogoniland has been and remains inadequate: the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) own procedures have not been applied, creating public health and safety issues.”

The UNEP report said 10 out of the 15 investigated sites which SPDC said they had completely remediated still had pollution exceeding the SPDC and government remediation values.

Shell, which on Wednesday agreed that an Ogoni community could seek compensation for oil spills in a British court, says most oil spills in the Niger Delta are caused by oil theft and sabotage attacks but says it cleans up whatever the cause.

PIPELINE SABOTAGE

“Oil spills in the Niger Delta are a tragedy, and SPDC takes them very seriously,” Mutiu Sunmonu, SPDC’s Managing Director, said in a statement on its website.

“Concerted effort is needed on the part of the Nigerian government, working with oil companies and others, to end the blight of illegal refining and oil theft in the Niger Delta . This is the major cause of the environmental damage.”

A spokeswoman for the company said it welcomed the report and would comment further after studying the details.

UNEP said Ogoniland communities are exposed to hydrocarbons every day as thick black oil floats around the creeks, while the impact on vegetation and fishing areas has been “disastrous.”

In one community, drinking water was contaminated with benzene, a substance known to cause cancer, at levels over 900 times above the World Health Organisation guidelines. The site was close to a pipeline owned by Nigeria’s state-oil firm NNPC, the report said.

“We will undertake any clean-up. It doesn’t mean we are culpable. Pipeline vandalism, by the very communities who are affected, is the major issue,” an NNPC spokesman said. He said he had not read the report.

While Shell does not operate in Ogoniland anymore, its pipelines and other infrastructure remain and still suffer spillages and sabotage attacks.

UNEP’s report is the most detailed scientific study on any area in the Niger Delta, UNEP and rights groups said. It was paid for partly by Shell after a request by the government.

$1 BILLION FUND

The findings were undertaken over a 14-month period, surveyed 122km of pipeline rights of way, reviewing more than 5000 medical records and engaging over 23,000 people at local meetings.

The report recommends that three new institutions are set up to support environmental restoration, which would include a US$1b fund, contributed to by the oil companies and government for the first five years of the clean-up.

Amnesty International, a rights group actively involved in Niger Delta environmental problems, said the report proved the Anglo-Dutch major was responsible for the pollution.

“This report proves Shell has had a terrible impact in Nigeria, but has got away with denying it for decades, falsely claiming they work to best international standards,” said Amnesty International Global Issues Director, Audrey Gaughran.

“Shell must put its hands up, and face the fact that it has to deal with the damage it has caused. Trying to hide behind the actions of others, when Shell is the most powerful actor on the scene, simply won’t wash,” Gaughran added.

Shell’s London-listed shares lagged rivals by around 1 per cent on Thursday after it emerged the company had accepted that a British court had jurisdiction in villager claims for compensation for damages caused by two oil spills from pipelines controlled by SPDC, in which Shell is the lead but minority partner.

One source close to the case said the cost of cleaning up the spill and compensating those affected has been estimated by some experts as being in the region of 250 million pounds (NZ$488m).

Shell has been reducing its focus on onshore Nigeria, selling fields, following difficulties in the delta.

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/africa/5397619/Nigeria-needs-biggest-ever-oil-clean-up-report-slams-Shell

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association told a fiery public meeting in Sydney that good management could minimise the risks of water contamination, but never eliminate them.

”Drilling will, to varying degrees, impact on adjoining aquifers,” said the spokesman, Ross Dunn. ”The extent of impact and whether the impact can be managed is the question.”

The admissions came before the start of the first public hearing in NSW, held in Narrabri, of a Senate inquiry into the effects of coal seam gas mining.

The hearing was told that many farmers in northern and western NSW were angry about proposals to extract coal seam gas from their land, and some planned to join a mass campaign to lock their gates in the face of resources companies.

The NSW Farmers Association said a ”gas rush” had been driven across NSW in the past two years because the state government had allowed a five-year exemption on paying royalties on coal seam gas extraction, to facilitate the growth of the industry.

Mr Dunn addressed a meeting – organised by the NSW Greens – in Leichhardt on Monday night. It discussed the planned drilling of an exploratory well in St Peters by a coal seam gas company, Dart Energy. He later said he stood by his comments, and that they applied to the industry in general.

”The intent of saying that is to make it clear that we have never shied away from the fact that there will be impacts on aquifers,” Mr Dunn said.

”I’m wanting to ensure that we are not seen as saying there won’t be any impacts during the process. It is a matter of monitoring and managing those impacts.”

The contamination of underground water supplies by coal seam gas mining, and particularly the controversial fracking process which injects a mixture of sand, water and chemicals into rock strata at high pressure, has been among the chief concerns of people opposed to gas extraction.

Mr Dunn said the geology of different gas extraction sites varied and, in many cases, the aquifers affected would be too deep for rural land use, so agriculture would not be influenced.

The government has imposed a moratorium on fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, until the end of the year.

Opponents want all coal seam gas mining banned and a long-term study carried out into the health and environmental effects.

The president of the Farmers Association, Fiona Simson, told the Herald she was yet to meet a rural land-holder who approved of the way the coal seam gas industry was doing business.

”We have land-holders across NSW who are already being impacted by coal seam gas companies seeking to demand access to their land,” Ms Simson said.

One submission to the Senate inquiry, from the medical group Doctors for the Environment, outlined some of the potential health risks posed by coal seam gas mining.

It said some of the compounds used during drilling, or released from underground by drilling, could ”produce short-term health effects and some may contribute to systemic illness and/or cancer many years later”.

”The public health consideration of these matters has been inadequate, leaving the population exposed to potential health hazards,” the submission said.

The industry in Australia has consistently said there are no known health risks associated with the practice in Australia or overseas.

The Department of Environment and Resource Management announced on July 7 that no further coal gasification would be permitted at the project, near Kingaroy.

It made final a decision to suspend the trial in July last year, when traces of the cancer-causing chemical benzene was found in groundwater monitoring bores on the site.

The find angered locals, who have waged a campaign against the plant.

The department has asked Cougar to remove all infrastructure from the site, unless the landowner agrees to keep it.

It also ordered the company to treat and dispose of any contaminated water in surface storages and clean up groundwater.

In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange today, Cougar Energy said it had received formal notice of DERM’s decision on July 19.

“Cougar Energy Limited (ASX: CXY) advises that it will seek a review of the Queensland government’s decision to restrict the company’s activities at the Kingaroy underground coal gasification trial site,” it said.

The company said it had until August 2 to seek the internal review by DERM.

The department has also charged Cougar Energy with breaking the conditions of its environmental approval.

It’s accused of breaching operating permits by contaminating the site and failing to promptly notify authorities.

Walker Corporation, which has more than $4 billion of developments under way across Australia, was given a record fine for a company under the Native Vegetation Act for clearing the land at a property near Wilton, south-west of Sydney, in 2006 and 2007.

The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) brought the case against Walker Corporation and persuaded the court the company cleared seven native species including black she-oak and narrow-leaved ironbark.

These species had provided homes to two endangered ecological communities and habitat for threatened species including the koala, powerful owl, spotted-tailed quoll and eastern bent-wing bat.

Walker Corporation pleaded not guilty to the charges and told the court it had employed a contractor, Environmental Land Clearing, to clean up the property, which had weeds growing on it and had been used as a site to dump cars. Its spokesman said the company would appeal the judgment.

The court heard the contractor used a machine called a ”mega mulcher” to clear vegetation on the site which degraded the habitat for a range of native fauna.

Mr Kenneth Turner, a terrestrial ecologist employed by OEH, said the clearing would lead to the direct or indirect deaths from starvation and other means of individual reptiles, amphibians, birds, bats and ground and arboreal mammals, during and after clearing.

Walker Corporation, which had never been convicted of an environmental offence, argued it was not liable because the contractor had held itself out to be an expert company and cleared the land without it authorising, supervising or exerting control over the clearing, an argument Justice Rachel Pepper rejected.

”The fact remains that the clearing that it did carry out was undertaken in accordance with and directly as a result of Walker’s instructions,” she said.

Within four years the tax will be rolled into a carbon emissions trading scheme that Prime Minister Julia Gillard said would plug into a widening international market and which will almost certainly affect New Zealand.

Gillard and Prime Minister John Key have said the two nations’ emissions trading schemes should work as closely as possible together, and last month agreed to set up a senior officials group to determine how this could be achieved.

The new tax, announced yesterday by Gillard, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, is now certain to pass through Parliament after Lower House endorsement by Greens MP Adam Bandt and independents Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Andrew Wilkie.

This gives Gillard the votes she needs to pass the legislation to the Senate, where the Greens hold the balance of power.

The new tax also has the powerful backing of the union movement, mine workers, environmentalists and welfare groups.

“Now we’ve got the detail it’s time to tell the truth,” Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union national president Tony Maher said. “It’s time to stop playing politics and start planning for our future.”

But polls continue to hammer the Government and reflect voters’ rejection of a carbon tax. At the weekend a new Morgan poll showed the Coalition would easily beat Labor if an election was held now, and said only 37 per cent supported the tax.

Backed by a promised anti-tax blitz by miners and business groups, Opposition leader Tony Abbott said that despite Gillard’s apparent guarantee of success in Parliament, the Coalition would continue to fight it.

He said the next election would be a referendum on the tax – which would be repealed if the Opposition won power – and challenged Gillard to go the polls.

Abbott said there was little point in the tax because while millions of Australians would be worse off, the nation’s greenhouse emissions would not be reduced: “It’s all economic pain for no environmental gain.”

Gillard and her ministers will now start a huge hard-sell to convince voters that Abbott, miners, big business and climate change sceptics are wrong, arguing that Australia needs to act now or face much higher costs later.

She said the tax would remove 159 million tonnes of carbon pollution from the atmosphere by 2020, equivalent to taking 45 million cars off the road.

Gillard will be counting heavily on the huge compensation package tied to the tax to counter Abbott’s scare campaign about claimed blows to struggling households, employment and the economy.

The compensation package will cost A$4.2 billion ($5.3 billion) more than it earns over the next four years.

Under the plan Australia’s 500 biggest polluters will pay A$23 a tonne for carbon emissions, rising by 2.5 per cent above the rate of inflation to about $24.15 in 2013 and $25.40 the following year, before an emissions trading scheme starts in 2015.

But A$9.2 billion in assistance will be provided to support jobs and industries hit by the tax, including compensation for industries such as liquefied natural gas, aluminium and zinc smelting, steel and glass manufacturers, and pulp and paper companies.

More than A$1 billion in assistance will be provided to the coal sector.Gillard’s most compelling argument for voters will be the A$15 billion compensation package of increased benefits and tax cuts that she said would benefit millions of suburban households.

She said four million households would be better off after compensation, six million would be no worse off, and eight million would receive partial compensation for the price rises.

Only 700,000 would receive nothing.

Pensions, family tax payments, the dole, student allowances and other benefits will increase by 1.7 per cent a year, with the first payment made as a lump sum next year, followed by fortnightly payments from 2013.

This will be supported by tax cuts for all taxpayers with incomes below A$80,000 – most by about $300 a year – and an increase in the tax-free threshold from the current $6000 to $19,400 by July 2015, cutting about one million people from the tax system Petrol prices will be exempt, and A$13 billion has been earmarked for clean and renewable energy programmes, including low and zero emission technologies, energy efficiency, and a new biodiversity fund to protect native species from climate change.

THE GLOVES COME OFF

* Just 500 major polluters will pay the A$23-a-tonne tax, but living costs will rise.
* Nine out of 10 households will be compensated.
* More than A$9 billion will be spent on assistance to help industries and jobs damaged by the new tax.
* Australia’s worst coal-fired electricity generators will be axed and replaced by gas-fired plants by 2020, when a targeted 20 per cent of all energy will come from renewable sources.
* But the Opposition says the tax will hit millions of Australians without benefiting the environment.
* Coalition leader Tony Abbott pledges to oppose it all the way, fight the next election as a referendum on the tax, and repeal the legislation if the Opposition wins.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10737662