Overview

Important Update

From 31 March 2013 some licencing procedures are simpler and many businesses don’t need to apply for an environmental approval from local government. This is because of the Greentape Reduction Program and the Queensland Government review of the Environmental Protection Act 1994.

This means that many businesses don’t need to hold an environmental authority with Council; although they will still need to comply with the standards. In most cases Council officers are still responsible for investigating pollution incidents and environmental nuisance e.g. noise from a factory.

Below are the licencing requirements for local government environmentally relevant activities that may have changed.

Environmentally relevant activity	ERA threshold	Environmental authority required after 31 March 2013
ERA 6 - Asphalt manufacturing	a - manufacturing of asphalt in a year <1000 tonnes	No
ERA 6 - Asphalt manufacturing	b - manufacturing 1000t or more of asphalt in a year	Yes
ERA 8 - Chemical storage	3a - storing of 10m3 to 500m3 of chemicals of class C1 or C2 combustible liquids under AS 1940 or dangerous goods class 3	No
ERA 18 - Boilermaking or engineering	a - producing 200 tonnes to 10,000 tonnes of metal product in a year	No
ERA 18 - Boilermaking or engineering	b - producing more than 10,000 tonnes of metal product in a year	No
ERA 21 - Motor vehicle workshop operation	No threshold	No
ERA 37 - Printing	a - printing 200 to 1000 tonnes of materials in a year	No
ERA 37 - Printing	b - printing more than 1000 tonnes of material in a year	No
ERA 38 - Surface coating	2a - coating, painting or powder coating using 1 to 100 tonnes of surface coating material p.a.	No
ERA 38 - Surface coating	1 - anodising, electroplating, enamelling or galvanising using, in a year, the following quantity of surface coating materials— (a)   1t to 100t	Yes
ERA 43 - Concrete batching	No threshold	No
ERA 48 - Wooden and laminated product manufacturing	1 - manufacturing more than 100 tonnes of wooden products in a year	No
ERA 4 – Poultry farming	1 - farming more than 1,000 but not more than 200,000 birds	Yes.  Change of administering authority from local to state government.
ERA 12 - Plastic product  manufacturing	1 - manufacturing, in a year, a total of 50t or more of plastic product, other than a plastic product mentioned in item 2.	Yes
ERA 12 - Plastic product  manufacturing	2 - manufacturing, in a year, a total of 5t or more of foam, composite plastics or rigid fibre-reinforced plastics	Yes
ERA 19 - Metal forming	hot forming a total of 10000t or more of metal in a year	Yes
ERA 20 - Metal recovery	1 - recovering less than 100t of metal in a day.	Yes
ERA 20 - Metal recovery	2 - recovering 100t or more of metal in a day, or 10000t or more of metal in a year— (a)   without using a  fragmentiser (b) using a fragmentiser	Yes
ERA 49 - Boat maintenance or repair	operating, on a commercial basis, a boat maintenance or repair facility for maintaining or repairing hulls, superstructure or mechanical components of boats or seaplanes	Yes
ERA 61 - Waste incineration and thermal treatment	1 - incinerating waste vegetation, clean paper  or cardboard	Yes