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Efficiency|Environment|Exploration|Health|Mining|PROJECT|Resources|Environmental
Efficiency|Environment|Exploration|Health|Mining|PROJECT|Resources|Environmental
efficiency|environment|exploration|health|mining|project|resources|environmental

Miners welcome green-tape cuts in WA

16th May 2022

By: Esmarie Iannucci

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor: Australasia

     

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PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The resources sector has welcomed the Western Australian government’s commitment to reducing the reporting burden on industry, with Environment Minister Reece Whitby announcing that environmental reporting requirements would be stopped or halved for more than 60% of low- to medium-risk industry licences under a new pilot project.

The Reduced Reporting Burden project is a Streamline WA initiative, which aims to reduce the workload for licence holders for routine or lower-risk matters and provide the regulator with more time to focus on higher-risk matters. 

Previously, annual environmental monitoring and reporting were required for these licences, regardless of the operation's risk to the environment or public health, or whether the information was likely to change from year to year. 

Under the pilot program, a risk-based assessment was conducted to identify licences eligible for reduced reporting requirements. These include licences with no monitoring requirements, which will no longer require annual environmental reports, and licences with limited monitoring requirements, which will move to environmental reports every two years. 

Other licences, such as those that require comprehensive monitoring and have several environmental issues, multiple monitoring points, complex monitoring suites and/or high-frequency monitoring, will continue to require annual environmental reporting.

“This project applies a risk-based approach when setting reporting conditions, which encourages good environmental performance while also providing regulators with more time to focus on higher-risk matters,” said Whitby on Monday.

“It is important to note that the environmental monitoring requirements stay the same.

“While the changes relate to existing licences, these principles have been applied to the assessment of applications for new licences over the past 18 months, with more than 80 licences already benefiting from a reduction in unnecessary reporting requirements.

“We are now looking at where this practice can be applied to other instruments - to reduce unnecessary workload for licence holders and regulators for low-risk matters.”

The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (Amec) has welcomed the changes.

“The rapid growth of Western Australia’s mining and mineral exploration sector is putting significant pressure on the government and industry, and these new measures will make a meaningful improvement to the efficiency of the reporting process in Western Australia,” said Amec CEO Warren Pearce on Monday.

“These sensible changes will reduce the government’s administrative burden while ensuring strong environmental protections remain in place.

“Amec has been a strong advocate for significant regulatory reform and for better efficiency around environmental reporting. With less red tape for lower risk licence holders, this programme is a positive outcome for the mining and exploration industry,” said Pearce.

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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