Page 3316 - Week 09 - Thursday, 24 August 2017
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For these reasons, it is the ACT government’s view that the storage of dangerous substances in the territory needs to be more proactively and appropriately regulated from a planning perspective to prevent injury and possibly even loss of life, and that is what this bill does.
The primary policy outcome the government had in mind was to ensure that the planning process was activated only when the amount of dangerous substances was sufficient to require planning approval. We did not want to regulate, for instance, pool shops that store pool chemicals and those sorts of places. We therefore looked to the territory’s dangerous substance legislation, the act and the regulation. This legislation gave us a starting point or threshold that we could use in the planning scheme. The dangerous substance legislation provides for a hierarchy of substances which require certain levels of regulation depending on the level of danger present. We have used this hierarchy to set a threshold for when the planning assessment process kicks in.
I would now like to go into some detail about the proposed amendments. The bill amends schedule 4 of the Planning and Development Act using the threshold of “registrable premises” provided in section 208 of the dangerous substances regulation of 2004 to require a development application in the impact track for the storage of dangerous substances unless the planning and land authority produces an environmental significance opinion indicating that the proposal is not likely to have a significant adverse environmental impact. The authority will need to consult with prescribed agencies when doing an opinion, and the opinion is a notifiable instrument.
Section 208 of the dangerous substances regulation requires premises that store the placard amount of dangerous substances to be “registrable premises”. Schedule 1 of the regulation sets out what is a placard amount of a dangerous substance.
The amendments mean that a development approval will be required to store a quantity of dangerous substances that would require the land to be a registrable premise under the dangerous substances regulation. This will apply even if such storage is already an authorised use under the lease. The development application will be in the impact track and an environmental impact statement will be required unless the authority produces an environmental significance opinion indicating that the proposal is not likely to have a significant adverse environmental impact.
As the placard amount is considered to be the appropriate level at which premises need to be registered under the dangerous substances legislation, this is considered the appropriate threshold for planning matters to be engaged. Storage of dangerous substances below the threshold provided by section 208 of the dangerous substances legislation and regulation will be dealt with under the existing planning scheme. For example, a vet storing chemicals for the business would be covered by a DA to use the premises as a veterinary surgery.
In terms of transitional arrangements, those people already storing hazardous materials above the threshold in accordance with the Dangerous Substances Act who are on the placard quantity register will not be captured by the new provisions. This is because it is considered that these storage sites are appropriately regulated as they are
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