Meeting environmental obligations and duties

The Environmental Protection Act 1994 (EP Act) lists obligations and duties to prevent environmental harm, nuisances and contamination.

What is environmental harm

Environmental harm is a serious impact, or potentially serious impact on an environmental value defined under the EP Act. This includes environmental nuisance (e.g. odour, some types of noise etc). The serious impact can be either temporary or permanent, may occur on a small to significant scale and may differ significantly in the duration or frequency of impact.

Environmental harm may be caused by an activity directly or indirectly as a result of the activity, or from the combined effects of the activity and other activities or factors.

• Section 15 of the EP Act provides a definition of environmental nuisance.
• Sections 16 & 17 of the EP Act provide definitions of material and serious environmental harm respectively, which include monetary value thresholds.

The threshold amounts are based on an annual indexation of amounts that were set for the financial year ending 30 June 2023. This ensures that they align with contemporary costs.

For information on annual indexation visit Fees and services.

The department will publish on this page the financial year increased indexation of these figures.

*Determining whether harm is trivial or negligible requires the context of the harm to be considered, and the potential long-term effects of the harm. Section 17 of the EP Act provides that “serious environmental harm” is harm:

• that causes actual or potential harm to an environmental value that is irreversible, of a high impact or widespread, or causes actual or potential harm to an area of high conservation value or of special significance; or
• causes actual or potential loss or damage to property of more than $100,000 (post 1 July + CPI); or results in costs of more than $100,000 (post 1 July + CPI) to prevent or minimise the harm and to rehabilitate the environment.

There are obligations and duties to prevent environmental harm, nuisances and contamination.

Three primary duties that apply to everyone in Queensland are the:

• general environmental duty – not to carry out an activity that may cause harm without taking measures to prevent or minimise the harm
• duty to notify of environmental harm – to inform the relevant authority and landowners when environmental harm has occurred, or might occur; and
• duty to restore the environment – where an incident has resulted in unlawful environmental harm, to take measures to rehabilitate or restore the environment to its condition before the harm.

Penalties for causing environmental harm

If you cause environmental harm, the administering authority can take steps to make sure you comply with the law.

If you can demonstrate that when the environmental harm occurred, you were meeting the general environmental duty, you can use this as a defence.

The administering authority can take a range of actions to encourage compliance with the law before it has to resort to prosecution. These include:

• issuing an environmental enforcement order
• requiring an environmental investigation to determine the extent of the impact which the administering authority may use to direct you to monitor your impacts
• issuing penalty infringement notices.

In serious cases, you can be prosecuted under the Environmental Protection Act 1994.

More information

If you need more information about the Environmental Protection Act 1994 or environmental protection policies, contact your administering authority.