Cost recovery measures
New measures are being introduced from 2019-20 to recover some of the costs associated with environmental regulation and the support the EPA provides to industry.
Petrol stations, the resource recovery and transfer sector, and businesses licensed under Schedule 1 of the Environment Protection Act 1993 will be affected.
Petrol stations will require an EPA licence for the first time from 1 January 2020, reflecting the amount of site contamination caused by leaking or decaying underground petrol tanks, and the work required to deal with this. There will also be an increase in fees for large fuel storage facilities
Licence fees for resource recovery and transfer activities will increase to reflect the level of regulatory work needed for this sector.
The Solid Waste Levy will also rise. In the metropolitan area, it will rise to $110 per tonne on 1 July, then to $140 per tonne on 1 January 2020. In regional areas, the new rates will be half this. The levy applies only to waste going to landfill, not to recovered resources, as an incentive for recovery and recycling.
Charitable recycling organisations have identified the growing cost of sending unusable donations to landfill as a problem. In recognition of this issue, the waste levy paid by charitable recyclers to dispose of this waste will not rise on 1 July and will drop to the regional rate of $70 per tonne from 1 January 2020.
Schedule 1 licence fees will also rise, in addition to annual CPI increases. This increase reflects the cost of maintaining a 24-hour emergency response team for serious environmental incidents and emergencies, and the community engagement support we provide to business.
The EPA will be working with peak bodies and industry during the implementation phase.
