Who is required to apply for an Environmental Authority?
Premises that conduct any of the activities listed below are required to obtain an environmental authority from Bundaberg Regional Council.
- ERA 6 Asphalt manufacturing - (1000t or more of asphalt per year);
- ERA 12 Plastic product manufacturing - (50 tonnes or more of plastic products per year, or five (5) tonnes or more of foam, composite plastics or rigid fibre-reinforced plastics per year);
- ERA 19 Metal forming - (10000t or more of hot forming metal per year);
- ERA 38 Surface coating - (anodising, electroplating, enamelling or galvanising using one (1) tonne to 100 tonnes of surface coating materials in a year
- ERA 49 Boat maintenance or repair - (within 50 metres of a naturally occurring bed of surface waters)
- ERA 61 Waste incineration and thermal treatment - (incinerating waste vegetation, clean paper or cardboard).
If the activity conducted is not listed above, the owner/operator of the premises may still need to apply for an environmental authority from the Queensland Government, namely the DES. A full list of ERAs, including those that require approval from the Queensland Government can be found in Schedule 2 of the Environmental Protection Regulation 2008.
All of the above listed environmentally relevant activities are known as concurrence environmentally relevant activities and trigger a material change of use for the environmentally relevant activity under the Planning Act 2016 for fixed location activities. A development application is therefore required to be submitted and will be used as a single application for both the development permit and environmental authority.