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Planning, PFAS, and Public Trust: Andrew Mitchell on Best Practices for Contaminated Land Management
212 Plays20 days ago
Andrew Mitchell is an environmental engineer with over 25 years of experience in regulation, policy, emergency management, pollution incidents and site contamination.
Andrew currently leads the national environment team for ADE Consulting Group. His previous roles have included being a regulator of contaminated land, funding the clean-up of derelict sites, developing policy and preventative approaches for contamination, managing high-profile remediation projects, leading the NSW EPA in incident and emergency response and guiding the Department of Defence in investigating and managing PFAS contamination.
Through this work he has developed significant expertise in negotiation, influencing, analysis of incentives, community consultation and risk communication. He is a collaborative leader experienced in managing change processes and also a subject matter expert in the fields of risk assessment, contaminated land, hazardous chemicals and remediation.
In this episode Andrew reflects on key shifts in contaminated land management, including the evolution of NSW’s planning framework previously known as SEPP 55. He explains how what he calls a “co-regulation” model has enabled councils, consultants, and auditors to resolve contamination more efficiently through redevelopment processes.
He also highlights future risks associated with hazmat in infill housing, particularly the demolition of fibro homes, and urges stronger collaboration between councils and state government to ensure these developments proceed safely.
Drawing on decades of experience, Andrew outlines practical challenges and opportunities councils face in managing PFAS. He emphasizes the importance of transparency and early engagement with communities, referencing Peter Sandman’s Responding to Community Outrage as a valuable tool for navigating emotionally charged issues.
Andrew encourages local governments to assess their exposure across regulatory, financial, human health, environmental, and reputational dimensions—and to ensure these risks are communicated clearly to executives and councillors. He also flags the operational blind spots in areas like landfills and recycled water use, where well-intended sustainability measures can trigger costly consequences under zero-tolerance testing thresholds.
With NEMP 3.0 growing in size and complexity, Andrew recommends councils begin with the six-page summary of key changes and supplement their knowledge with up-to-date technical resources such as the ITRC’s PFAS training.
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Are you a local NSW council member looking for more resources like this?
You are invited to join the Local Government NSW Contaminated Land Network!
Local Government NSW (LGNSW) hosts a free, online network for council staff on the topic of contaminated land. The network includes an online forum for collaboration, information sharing and announcements about contaminated land regulation, guidance and training opportunities. Monthly meetings are held on themes that were set by the network participants, with presentations from regulators, technical experts, and case studies by councils.
Since the contaminated land network commenced in December 2023, more than 50% of NSW councils have joined, with over 200 participants. Feedback shows that councils are benefitting greatly from the network meetings and discussion on the platform, and we are pleased to invite you to join us.
To join the network, please use this link: https://lgsa.wufoo.com/forms/w1rf0os910rxyl6/
The project also comprises a webpage with up-to-date information and links to resources, which can be accessed here.
We hope to see you on the network soon!
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Transcript
Introduction to Contamination Station Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Contamination Station, safer environment together, a New South Wales EPA funded podcast. In these episodes, you'll hear from those working to implement contaminated land policies and procedures at the local level by sharing our stories, frustrations, wins and losses.
00:00:19
Speaker
Our aim is for this podcast to become a repository of information that will support those currently working to combat contaminated land and for those yet to come.
Meet Andrew Mitchell: Environmental Expert
00:00:30
Speaker
In today's episode, I'm joined by Andrew Mitchell.
00:00:33
Speaker
Andrew is an environmental engineer with over 25 years of experience in regulation, policy, emergency management, pollution incidents, and site contamination. Andrew currently leads the national environment team for ADE Consulting Group.
00:00:48
Speaker
His previous roles have included being a regulator of contaminated land, funding the clean-up of derelict sites, developing policy and preventative approaches for contamination, managing high-profile remediation projects, leading the NSW EPA in incident and emergency response,
00:01:05
Speaker
and guiding the Department of Defence in investigating and managing PFAS contamination. Through his work, he has developed significant expertise in negotiation, influencing, analysis of incentives, community consultation and risk communication.
00:01:20
Speaker
He is a collaborative leader experienced in managing change processes and also a subject matter expert in the fields of risk assessment, contaminated land, hazardous chemicals and remediation.
00:01:31
Speaker
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and the guest as individuals and do not necessarily reflect those of the New South Wales EPA or any other organisation.
00:01:43
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this episode of Contamination Station, an EPA funded podcast. I'm your host, Chanel Gleeson-Wheely, and our guest today is Andrew Mitchell. Hi, Andrew. How are you going? Hi, Chanel. Very well, thanks.
00:01:55
Speaker
That's good to hear.
Evolution of Contaminated Land Management (Q&A)
00:01:56
Speaker
So you've had a diverse career spanning roles in regulation, emergency management and environmental consulting. Over the course of your career, what key themes or lessons have emerged in the realm of contaminated land management that could possibly help council officers?
00:02:12
Speaker
Well, I started out in 1996 as a graduate in consulting. That's a long time ago now, it seems. yeah um and And during that period, have been quite a few it regulatory changes, policy changes, guidelines have been issued.
00:02:26
Speaker
Probably the most significant one, though, for contaminated land and and council offices is the, I guess, the integrated planning framework. So what I'm talking about is what used to be called CEP 55, or the Resilience and Hazard CEP in New South Wales. Sorry, I'm talking about New South Wales, but the other states all have similar arrangements in place.
00:02:46
Speaker
That combined with the site auditor scheme and the, i guess, the alignment of incentives where a developer has a piece of land they would like to make money out of,
00:02:56
Speaker
There's a policy framework that requires they consider contamination and that contamination can get resolved in the most efficient way when that land is being redeveloped and that can prevent future problems from occurring in the future. So that is an enormously efficient way to address contamination.
00:03:14
Speaker
legacy contamination. In the olden days of the EPA in the mid-90s, this is what I'm told, it wasn't my experience at that time, but they were being asked all sorts of questions and were reviewing all sorts of consultants' reports.
00:03:28
Speaker
It was really an inefficient so way to go about it. So I guess, modern public policy speak, it's ah it's a co-production relationship or indeed a a co-regulation but relationship where the government has said, we'll do the big stuff.
00:03:42
Speaker
And here are the rules for the little stuff and council, developers, auditors, consultants, you go ahead and you take care of 80% of the problem.
Emerging Risks and Challenges in Land Management
00:03:52
Speaker
e Definitely an improvement on the way that ah it used to work and take quite a long time and quite a lot of money in a lot of situations.
00:04:00
Speaker
So in your opinion, what are the emerging risks or things that councils should be looking at for the future around contaminated land management? So the CEP 55, I'll call it that for a convenience framework, has worked very, very well for more than 20 years.
00:04:18
Speaker
In recent years, though, the government has recognised that there is a need to streamline aspects of development. So you've had the exempt and complying development codes and a range of other planning measures to help people build stuff quickly. Now, under those frameworks, contamination doesn't always need to be considered or doesn't need to be considered in great detail.
00:04:39
Speaker
So what I'm ah is potentially concerned about in the future is with the push towards transport-oriented development, with the push towards uplift of housing density, I see a huge number of fibro houses in Sydney that going to be demolished and turned into terraces or flats or units or or some other form of development. And that's great. We need that density.
00:05:00
Speaker
But I don't know that the controls are in place for correct hazmat evaluation of these houses, for appropriate disposal of the asbestos, for validation that the land is clear and suitable for redevelopment. So I think that's an area that that councils and the state government need to collaborate on so we can get that housing that infill and housing development while we do so safely. We don't introduce other risks, mainly around building debris from old fibro houses.
00:05:32
Speaker
Okay. And I guess ah in somewhat in line with that question, you've been involved, I believe, with some derelict site monitoring or mediation that's been under management by local councils. Can you explain any of your experience in that area?
00:05:47
Speaker
Sure. So 15 or more years ago, i had a ah phenomenal job in in the EPA looking after the environmental trust programs for contaminated land. So each year, the trust provided about $2 million dollars to address orphan sites or derelict sites, or in particular, council gasworks.
00:06:05
Speaker
And so for about you four or five years, I managed that ah program and delivered real tangible benefits. So we had a case of ah of a battery breaker where acid and lead had been poured across the backyard and got onto the neighboring property.
00:06:21
Speaker
We had multiple gasworks. that yeah at the time were a marvellous public service from the 1850s through to the 1880s. They were developed. They provided safe streets. They provided lights at nighttime, cooking, but they were shut down from the 1950s through the 1980s and left quite a bit of a contamination legacy.
00:06:42
Speaker
And these were yeah now in the responsibility of many regional councils, quite small councils with limited funds. So we provided up to half a million dollars for remediation, up to $200,000 for investigation. My job was to find the consultants who could carry out these works, find the contractors, link with council, explain the risks to council, the funding to council, hold their hand and help deliver a real improvement in these towns.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, so other than the the funding, what other challenges did you face or find, I guess, were unique to that type of project? My experience back then was that smaller councils had you know maybe just one person who did everything environmental, everything health, and probably a few other things as well.
00:07:30
Speaker
Very busy job, no budget. So I was on one hand working with with this person, On the other hand, i was talking to the GM because it's quite a bit of money and quite a bit of risk to council.
00:07:42
Speaker
So it was about showing them how some of these works could proceed in a way that did not introduce more risk to council, but instead addressed some of that risk. So it's about, ah guess, the framing or the contextualization. what yeah What is this legacy site?
00:07:59
Speaker
What does it mean to the community? Some of them had childcare centers on top of them because that's another... function that council undertakes and there was a bit of spare land. um So it's about providing the right risk communication to the parents and the the carers, and about providing another home for them while earthworks, remediation was was carried out.
00:08:21
Speaker
And importantly about undertaking the works with a very, very limited budget because half a million dollars doesn't go far. with the gas works. So ah my job in the EPA was not, I was not the regulator. I was not setting the requirements. Other people were doing that.
00:08:37
Speaker
My job was about delivering the most benefit for the least dollars. So one side in particular, the remedial strategy was if it's black and smelly, pull it out. If it's not, it can probably stay there and we can probably live with it in the context of other contamination at that at that site.
00:08:53
Speaker
So that that some consultants at the time didn't understand that, and but a few of them children did, and they won a lot of work cleaning up these sites and yeah delivering ah a big benefit to those communities.
Communication and Negotiation in Environmental Consulting
00:09:04
Speaker
So in what you just said, you've touched on, I guess, what is really a fundamental aspect of being somebody who works in contaminated land, especially in that sort of role that you're talking about that you were doing, where a lot of the time the the information or the message that you're delivering to either a developer or a landowner or ah both or council is something that they don't want to hear.
00:09:27
Speaker
You seem to have a lot of experience in negotiation and risk communication, which is often an area that I think isn't recognized as a key skill for consultants.
00:09:38
Speaker
So do you have any tips or good resources that you can share with the audience to help, I guess, upskill in that area? Sure, sure. So i' I'd point to two resources. Probably the most important one is by a fellow called Peter Sandman.
00:09:55
Speaker
If you Google him, you'll you'll find him. He's written a book, called Responding to Community Outrage. It goes through 12 factors of outrage. The book is free for download. It's in the public domain. He's just made it freely available.
00:10:08
Speaker
A while back when I was at epa looking after emergency management, we brought him out to Sydney to try train EPA staff in outrage management. The principles that he that he exposes there are very clear, very, very simple, and can be used as ah as a diagnostic for any particular situation. I used them last year.
00:10:30
Speaker
ah gave a presentation on asbestos and mulch, which folks in Sydney will remember, and went through the factors of outrage. And ah you can you look at each of these and say, well, this is where the community is upset because it was imposed upon them, because it's foreign, because there's ah sense of dread because they have no control, because they were already upset with whatever the project was.
00:10:52
Speaker
And then through that diagnostic tool, you can then look at how can I address it outrage? Oh, I can provide more transparency. We can give the community some control. We can explain the risks. We can do this cleanup endeavor.
00:11:05
Speaker
So using those factors of our outrage in any particular situation, you can proactively yeah I don't like to manage the community, but yeah that's more or less what you're doing to help them see where things are at and and make them feel more comfortable about what's going on.
00:11:22
Speaker
The other resource ah I'd refer people to is it's a very old book from America called Getting to Yes. by Fisher and Urie. This was the the textbook in a course I did at uni 12 years ago on ah negotiation.
00:11:38
Speaker
It's like an American paperback novel that you'd have at the airport. That was a textbook. And it's very, very simple that if you understand what people want, what what what is their interest? What are they motivated by?
00:11:51
Speaker
then it's possible to get a a win-win situation. yeah Unlike some prominent politicians, it's not a zero-sum game. If I win, you don't have to lose. In fact, if I win, you can win as well.
00:12:03
Speaker
And it's about looking at those potential conflict situations and working out how we can all come away better off than how we started. I've got a personal favorite, actually. Have you ever read Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss?
00:12:18
Speaker
No, i haven't. No. I like that one. that's Obviously, he's more talking about war situations or hostage hostage situations, but the elements or the fundamentals of what he's saying work in even everyday situations with colleagues or your boss so or clients. Yeah. So that's a great one too.
PFAS Contamination Management: Challenges and Strategies (Q&A)
00:12:37
Speaker
Excellent. So moving on to, i guess, as another part of your career experience. PFAS has become quite a significant concern, as we all know. So from your perspective, what are the primary challenges local governments face in managing PFAS contamination?
00:12:53
Speaker
So I think fundamentally local governments, they get stuck with everything. Things that the feds don't want to do and that the state wants to do, ah, local, you can sort that out. And that puts them at the front line of many of these many of these issues. So I think there's there's two main aspects of of council. There's one is the planning, assessment, environment, regulatory functions, and the other is the operational functions of council.
00:13:19
Speaker
So some councils have a lot of operations. They run airports, landfills, wastewater treatment, drinking water supply, and otherlthough other councils only have a few operations. So I think that the main challenge is for them to work out what what is their risk and exposure, multidimensional risk and exposure I'm talking about. So there's financial, reputational, political, as well as health and environmental issues.
00:13:42
Speaker
to to PFAS in the way they're carrying out their works. The folks determining the DAs and the folks regulating activities have some good guidance and some some good support from yeah Department of Planning and EPA and and and others.
00:13:58
Speaker
But the folks who are operating, say, a landfill have that level of support. And i think I think these are the ones where council has both risk and opportunity. Yeah. So we often hear that PFAS is everywhere but hard to deal with and that's true in a way. How do you suggest councils balance practical decision making with the level of public concern around PFAS and what trying to manage PFAS, I guess, the emotions that will trigger in a community?
00:14:25
Speaker
So it's very unfortunate that they've been called forever chemicals. Things like lead, mercury, they're also elemental, they're forever chemicals, although they change their compounds in in nature.
00:14:37
Speaker
There's a small group of PFAS that doesn't really break down, thus the name. But the problem is that we can detect this PFAS at a thousand times lower than then we can detect other typical contaminants, pesticides, yeah even dioxins.
00:14:53
Speaker
So there are many, many hazardous chemicals out there. yeah They're all trying to kill us. PFAS are the ones that are actually easier to detect at very, very low concentrations. And so we're finding them everywhere.
00:15:04
Speaker
So I think first we need to acknowledge that the community concern is real. These feelings are are genuine. Not every everyone has you know, degrees and decades of experience and training in this thing. know, very few understand the details. And so it's a question of risk communication.
00:15:22
Speaker
ah How do we help the community see what is important and and and what is not? The thing about PFAS is that it's it's in our daily lives. So it's in your disposable food packaging. It's in some eye drops.
00:15:34
Speaker
It's in your outdoor clothing. It's in your carpets. And there are a very large number of PFAS, or some people say PFASs, in the family. And we're only in Australia regulating three of them, really.
00:15:47
Speaker
so What should a council do? They need to show their community that they are being proactive and transparent. So where they are operating, say, drinking water supply, the worst thing that could happen is they don't test for PFAS, someone else does.
00:16:05
Speaker
shows a local newspaper, and then there's a community outrage. So go back to Peter Sandman, even better than responding to community outrage is preventing it by being transparent and open in the first place and taking community along with you for the journey. And importantly, contextualizing that particular exposure about, you say, drinking water with all the other voluntary exposures that people have, of which of which there are a great deal.
00:16:36
Speaker
So are there any other specific, I guess, responsibilities or decision points where councils, i guess, are more likely or run the risk of getting caught out legally or reputationally around PFAS?
00:16:50
Speaker
The NHMRC published a draft drinking water guideline for PFOS of four nanograms per litre last year, which I found very troubling. And as did many other people and many submissions were made, they haven't yet decided what the actual guideline is going to be.
00:17:06
Speaker
if they do settle at four, then there will be ah very large diversion of capital investment from other things into treating water. Now, I don't proclaim to be an expert in toxicology, but if if this happens, then other people will yeah will lose their funding and it'll go into treating water. And whether that's ah a good thing for a society, you know,
00:17:29
Speaker
time will tell. In some states, such as Queensland, they've issued guidance for PFAS in compost, which if implemented ah properly, effectively bans compost, because all compost is above these levels.
00:17:41
Speaker
the So the activities of the council in running landfill, providing mulch, compost, managing leachate from the landfill, managing sewage treatment, biosolids, effluent, this where the pain points are going to come for council.
00:17:56
Speaker
yeah Those councils who run airports, they I think they've already had a good look at those operations that are probably well advanced with that. Councils who've leased land to firefighting training or other issues, they've probably had a good look at those.
00:18:09
Speaker
So i see I see PFAS as as two dimensions. It's a contaminated site problem. So your airport, your fire training, center. Those are contaminated sites that need to be managed as such.
00:18:21
Speaker
But then there's your ambient PFAS, where it's just all around us in in all of our furnishings, our recycled materials. The challenge there is where should governments spend money to mitigate risk?
00:18:36
Speaker
And what risk will that actually mitigate? And how will we tell? And therefore, is it actually a good idea to go down that path? So this issue that we've been talking about around PFAS, it's all portrayed in a movie that I recently watched. It's actually a 2019 movie called Dark Waters and it's now showing on Netflix. So it might be popping up in a lot of people's accounts like it did in mine.
Impact of Media on PFAS Perception
00:18:58
Speaker
And it's raised enough public concern that the Australian Federal Government PFAS Task Force has included it on its PFAS Frequently Asked Questions section of their website. The local council in this movie is portrayed to be covering up known contamination, but I believe there's many parts of the movie which are not factual. Can you comment on this?
00:19:18
Speaker
no No movie is factual. This is ah this is a drama, a sort of documentary. So I saw it recently. It's a great movie. Erin Brockovich, another great movie. And we're going back in time a bit, but A Civil Action with John Travolta, another excellent movie yeah where they had drilling rigs racing each other to site to put in the monitoring wells.
00:19:37
Speaker
So well all these... yeah interesting and entertaining American movies are about bad, yeah know evil industry disposing of toxic waste in the wrong way.
00:19:49
Speaker
That's what they're all about. And it's about a lawyer saving the day. And the scientists and engineers, ought don't know what they're up to, but but it's all about lawyers solving these problems. So I think they' they're interesting movies. there They help show others who aren't in our field yeah sort of what we go through with health risk assessments and contaminated site assessments.
00:20:09
Speaker
But it it shows a very different situation than that which we have in Australia. First of all, we don't have that significant manufacturing of chemicals that they do in the US. We have not had yeah the mafia running our landfills, so to speak.
00:20:23
Speaker
We have you know generally, even since the even since the eighty s reasonably good environmental regulation. Now, of course, there are some examples. There's a particular one in Western Victoria, which is quite egregious.
00:20:37
Speaker
And there's a few other examples of toxic waste being dumped in ah in a terrible way, leading to potential community harm. But when it's been identified, the government has stepped in quite quickly and acted very strongly. Because one thing that we expect in Australia is we expect our government to look after our health and safety and well-being.
00:20:55
Speaker
So that that toxic waste dump in Victoria, New South Wales, waste oil refinery, there's a few cases where the government has stepped in and and and done the remediation because it had to get done. And no lawyer had to sue a corporate entity to to cause that to happen.
00:21:15
Speaker
Good answer.
00:21:18
Speaker
The National Environmental Management Plan or the NEMP versions 2.0 and 3.0 have provided frameworks for PFAS management. How have these documents influenced way councils approach PFAS related issues?
00:21:30
Speaker
So there've been three iterations of the PFAS NEMP. Version 1 took a year of amazing effort by a small committee of of state regulators around the country. It was 52 pages. It was excellent guidance, clear, crisp, provided, and awesome go-to in a total absence of regulations back in 2018 when it came out.
00:21:53
Speaker
It took two more years to get then version 2. that had nearly tripled to 134 pages and then five more years to then version 3. 311 pages. i've I've got it here. I've printed it out double-sided. but That's pretty huge. And if I just drop it on my desk, it makes an enormous noise. This thing is not something you would carry around in your bag.
00:22:16
Speaker
Yes, it's important. It's good to have, but it's a textbook. I want to acknowledge that the you know the National Chemicals Working Group put it together, have been yeah very challenging job, but it is very, very hard to use, hard to understand, and includes information in there that is rapidly being made out of date.
00:22:36
Speaker
So I was told recently that to keep up with the emerging body of knowledge for PFAS, you need to read three channels ah three journal articles a day. Now, if I'm lucky, I get to read one a week, mainly what I see on LinkedIn, and i feel somewhat up to speed with where things are going.
00:22:54
Speaker
But there's a lot that's changing very, very quickly. So what what we need, what counsel in particular needs guidance on PFAS for is what is the policy, what is the law,
00:23:05
Speaker
what are the regulations?
Resources and Guidelines for PFAS Management
00:23:06
Speaker
And then where should they go to, to look, to find out the textbook stuff? like Like, how does PFAS work? You know, how do do an investigation to find PFAS? So a resource that I will plug to everyone a a US organization called the Interstate Technical and Regulatory Council, the ITRC.
00:23:27
Speaker
What the ITRC is, is ah collection of 50 states in the US. You know, they're regulators from all 50 states working at a not-for-profit committee arrangement where they volunteer their time.
00:23:42
Speaker
None of them, so as a state public servant in America, you're not allowed to do all sorts of things. So they they volunteer their time out of hours. to contribute to technical guidance where the US EPA has a gap and the states see the need for something.
00:23:57
Speaker
They collaborate with universities and they collaborate with consultants, all again volunteering their time. And they have an ah an incredible vetting process Because if you follow the news, you'll see that America is quite politically polarized.
00:24:10
Speaker
And the question about policy is one that's argued about a lot. So these guidance from the ah ITRC, it's policy-free, politics-free, just technical.
00:24:22
Speaker
which means it's an amazing resource for those who want to know the science of something. So they've had a PFAS working group for many years. They've published a range of PFAS guidance. They've got a YouTube channel with a short version and long version PFAS training course.
00:24:39
Speaker
So if you want to find out about PFAS, yes, the NIMP is good, but the ITIC is better and it's being kept up to date. And so i'd yeah I'd encourage everyone to go and look up what the ITIC has published.
00:24:53
Speaker
and So for the purposes of, i guess, today's conversation, for those of us who don't have time to digest all of NEMP 3.0, what are some of the key changes or additions that you can tell us about that people should be made aware of compared to the version 2.0?
00:25:10
Speaker
So I think the team recognized that they may face some criticism about writing a really fat document. you've done something really helpful and published a six-pager that lists all the changes, which is which is actually a really useful ready reckoner.
00:25:23
Speaker
for For councils, I suppose there's there's one change that's relevant for the planning process in that the um residential ah guidelines for low-density residential guidelines, the numbers have dropped.
00:25:36
Speaker
So we have lower numbers for PFOS, PFHXS, and PFOA. They are quite low. You can probably buy some a bag of compost or soil from your hardware store that has more PFAS in it.
00:25:51
Speaker
than these guidelines. That's another problem. But apart from that, the other main changes relate to really the operational side of council. So provides guidance on water utilities.
00:26:02
Speaker
So how a water utility should test for and manage and plan for and look at PFAS in their system. It provides guidance on some landfills, recycled organics, and even use of water for dust suppression in construction projects.
00:26:18
Speaker
So there there are some, there is some useful guidance there, yes, for councils. More in the operation side of things.
Case Study: PFAS in Recycled Water
00:26:25
Speaker
hu That's interesting about the water for dust suppression, something i never would have considered looking at the NEMP for, so I'll have to go away and do that.
00:26:33
Speaker
and So so ill I'll give you a little case study. So we worked on a road project in Queensland a little while ago. and in Queensland, if you have a waste, a waste store, you must test it for PFAS using the lowest possible detection limit you can find.
00:26:50
Speaker
And if you find any PFAS, any PFAS, it's automatically the bad sort of waste, ah the expensive waste. and So on many road projects, they go for sustainability and they use recycled water for dust suppression.
00:27:05
Speaker
So the recycled water on this project was provided by the council and it was perfectly suitable for use in construction except that there was PFAS in the wastewater system like there is in every single wastewater system in Australia and the technology used to treat the recycled water was just your standard wastewater treatment technologies which every water utility in Australia is using and so they did not take out the PFAS.
00:27:32
Speaker
So the PFAS from the dust suppression water led to some soils on that project being unavailable for beneficial reuse and needing to go to landfill.
00:27:43
Speaker
And costing a lot. ah Very expensive. Most the waste of landfill resources. And, you know, four for what... For what benefit? it's i think it's I think it's questionable when we have low or zero tolerance guidelines without contextualization that in fact this water is being applied to agriculture and people are eating the food that's been growing. in it And so if the construction project soil is a problem, what about the farm?
00:28:09
Speaker
Yeah, I guess the the the risk analysis hasn't kept up or it hasn't been done as to, yeah, what what level I guess are suitable for different uses.
00:28:21
Speaker
It's targeting people who have money, like a construction project has money, and who put their hand up, you know, want to do the right thing and and test for things. So those are the people who, and organizations that are wearing some of the cost of this.
00:28:35
Speaker
It's not currently a very little playing field. I don't know, don't tell, vibe going on in some parts of industry, and indeed some parts of government, because the uncertainty is immense and the cost is potentially immense.
00:28:52
Speaker
So back to the NIMP guidance, have you seen councils interpret these guidelines differently? And is there anything you'd flag as particularly important not to miss? I've seen EPAs interpret the guidelines differently. he So it's supposed to be a nationally consistent document, yet every state is doing it their own way. So M3 is still relatively new and I'm not familiar yet with the published policy statements of the relevant EPAs in in how they're going to implement it. So I think it would be prudent for councils to watch the
00:29:26
Speaker
what is the EPA or DETC debt sea or ah the other environmental regulators, what are they saying about how the NEP will be implemented? There's another very important document with some big question marks around it called ICEMS.
00:29:41
Speaker
So ICEMS is the Industrial Chemical Environmental Management Scheme. It's run by the feds. It is a program to more or less ban really nasty chemicals and restrict their import and use and disposal.
00:29:56
Speaker
I think there's a question out at the moment about PFOS, PFOA, PFH, excess, they've all been listed in iChems in the in the schedule that applies to the the worst chemicals.
00:30:08
Speaker
So, ICHEMS prohibits the use, I put use in inverted commas because it's very carefully defined, or disposal, again in inverted commas, of these PFASs.
00:30:21
Speaker
There's a question about how it's going to relate to water utilities, biosolids, contaminated sites, recycled organics and so forth.
00:30:31
Speaker
So I asked ICEMS on their email a little while ago what their view is with how it's going to be applied to legacy contamination and they they told me that it's focused on products and articles.
00:30:45
Speaker
So once the PFAS is already in the environment, it's not an ICEMS problem. But I've had differing opinions from various environmental regulators, which leads me to think if you are providing a soil conditioner contains recycled organic subiosolids PFAS,
00:31:05
Speaker
then its perhaps the use limitation of ICEMs may apply to you. you're doing a soil remediation project using stabilizing agents to bind the PFAS and reduce the leachability, is a beneficial reuse for that soil on a construction project, is that going to be a, quote, mechanism?
00:31:23
Speaker
and therefore subject to ICAMS. The numbers in ICAMS, the limits are are quite low and will be exceeded in a range of beneficial reuse scenarios. So i think a question for councils to ask EPAs is to say, well, how is it going to be implemented?
00:31:38
Speaker
How is ICAMS going to be implemented? What is this going to mean for me? And then yeah proceed from there.
Comprehensive Risk Assessment and Stocktake for Councils
00:31:45
Speaker
and And both of those will potentially impact on back to construction projects, on them achieving their sustainability ratings as well.
00:31:52
Speaker
Not a council issue, but yeah, interesting repercussions. So yes, so we we all want to, so I use the phrase safe circularity. we We want to, you know, as we want a circular economy, but some things shouldn't be recycled really.
00:32:07
Speaker
So how do we get to safe circularity where we've got appropriate beneficial reuse of as as much as we can. And in in particular, how do we get to circularity rather than spirality? So if you reuse it once and then throw it away, that's not circular.
00:32:22
Speaker
that's That's a bit of a spiral. How do we get to a position where we can keep on keeping on keeppping um and and be truly sustainable about this reuse? And an issue I'll just flag there is that We're only talking about three PFAS in Australia.
00:32:37
Speaker
The PFAS that you find in abundance in the circular economy are not these three PFAS. It's the other PFAS 10 times, 50 times higher than the three PFAS that are regulated.
00:32:53
Speaker
So yeah are those goalposts going to move at some point? Should they move? If these three are a problem, Perhaps the others are somewhat of a problem.
00:33:03
Speaker
Maybe the guidelines should be different. But let's get things into place now so that in 10 years, 20 years, we don't have any regrets. So given the evolving nature of PFAS research and regulation that we've just discussed, what proactive measures should councils consider to stay ahead in managing potential PFAS contamination?
00:33:24
Speaker
So this is one of the, I think, most useful parts of the NEP guidance, to undertake a stock take of risk regarding PFAS. So we can't eliminate PFAS from the world, from ah from our operations, from our from our councils. and What we can do is work out which problems need to be solved,
00:33:42
Speaker
and which problems we just have to live with. And maybe art problems after all. It's a question of stock take and a risk prioritization. the The risk should look at the regulatory, the financial, the human health, the environmental, reputation of risk. So it's a multidimensional assessment of risk and this should be done in in councils with appropriate communication with the executive and with the councillors.
00:34:08
Speaker
So it can't be locked into just a small part of the environmental health or operations part of council. It's ah it's a whole of council question. The moving regulatory goalposts can present some really significant risks to council. So if they have to spend all this money on treating water,
00:34:27
Speaker
what's going to happen to the childcare, the waste collection, the rates, they're limited from putting up rates. So I spoke earlier about it not being a zero-sum game in negotiation. In council budgeting, it's a bit of a zero-sum game.
00:34:40
Speaker
It's very hard to raise extra money. and if you have to spend a lot more money on something, then something else is going to suffer. So what proactive measures should council do? They they need to understand what their totality risks are with respect to PFAS and then get a plan in place to manage the big ones, to provide funding where they need it and to communicate about the little ones that they're not going to solve. if If council's not going to act on whatever it may be, the community needs to know about that and it needs to be yeah communicated in ah in a transparent way.
Emergency Management and Environmental Expertise
00:35:15
Speaker
So i I acknowledge that you may not be able to talk about specifics or about lots of different things, but are you able to share a case study where a local council was involved in the emergency management of an incident involving contamination with no names, please?
00:35:31
Speaker
Sure, sure. So i this will be the my ninth year out of the EPA. So the last job out of the EPA was incident and emergency management. That was a role created following the Orica-Kurigang Island release of hexamalent chromium, which caused a large community outrage in the end of 2011. So my job was so's so my job was to do a few things at that time. It was to improve the way the EPA managed incidents and emergencies.
00:36:00
Speaker
There's a lot of training, procedures, policies, guidance. Improved the way that the EPA linked in with other organisations, so relationships with the police, fire and rescue, health,
00:36:11
Speaker
safe work and see whether we could improve any systemic ways that the state responded to incidents and emergencies with an environmental aspect.
00:36:22
Speaker
So early on in that in that time, there were some bushfires in regional parts of the state and there were quite severe bushfires. Many and your homes were lost. I remember, I think it was a Sunday, we had a teleconference back when telephones were used. We had to dial into a number, get a text message, then you dial into the number, put a code, and then you're online with 20 people.
00:36:44
Speaker
So the question was the superintendent of police in this country town wanted to know whether he should evacuate the town of about 2,000 people. because a hazmat consultant had put some asbestos air monitors up on a fiber house that had burned down and found some free asbestos fibers in that sample.
00:37:03
Speaker
So we had to all the government agencies on the line, we council on the line, it was a long, long conversation. But what that reveals to me was the the need for expertise to be injected to the local level during these significant events.
00:37:23
Speaker
So that that teleconference decided, though no, don't evacuate the town. Do more asbestos air monitoring, but don't attach the the pumps to the building that burnt down.
00:37:34
Speaker
Actually put them where people are. and gather a more realistic understanding of potential asbestos exposures. The Department of Health and Safe Work and EPA provided very clear guidance to the police and the council and the fire brigade in that situation, and i think a good outcome was achieved.
00:37:55
Speaker
And there there was very good and clear risk messaging to that community. Flowing on from that instance, And another event where there were some storms that also destroyed many fibro properties in another part of the state, we developed a ah package of procedures and training and plans around managing asbestos.
00:38:17
Speaker
So it was it was all about... making as best as boring. It was about everyone had a job. There was a flowchart, there were procedures, there were checklists, there were video training for first responders to to watch and and and yeah prior to the event.
00:38:34
Speaker
And ah the the effect of this was when the Blue Mountains bushfires happened a few years later, everyone knew what to do. Council had their job, SafeWork did their job, EPA did their job. but the fire brigade at their job, there was blue glue sprayed everywhere, there were there were signs put up.
00:38:53
Speaker
And the result was the community was allowed back into that a disaster zone much faster than in previous events. because one of them one of main one of the main blockers was, well, there might be asbestos and okay there might be risk. And those those were genuine concerns, making things into procedures and plans and providing training and clarity of roles.
00:39:15
Speaker
And by the injection of expertise, in particular, EPA, Safe Work and Health collaborating at a director level to senior people within those organizations, having good personal relationships, talking on weekends and evenings and coming up with a consistent message that was then communicated to the people on the ground, that went a huge way to bringing about the recovery of those communities by managing the risks that had to be managed and by getting on around all the other risks that are just there that you don't need to manage. You can just acknowledge and move on.
00:39:51
Speaker
So these are the procedures that you've just talked about. Have they filtered down and and made it into standard practice now? Yes, yes. So EPA published an asbestos emergency plan, which was a sub-plan to the CBRN hazmat plan.
00:40:11
Speaker
that's a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and hazardous material plan. That's a plan that the fire brigade owns. And if one of those bad things happens... then the the the fire rescue New South Wales and others responded in accordance with the plan. so So we published an asbestos plan to us to address this risk. It lasted, ah don't know, maybe five years.
00:40:33
Speaker
And then it was dissolved and wrapped up in standard operating procedures. Okay. but Good outcome. It addressed a felt need. And then in the vein of just making it boring, the plan wasn't needed anymore because everyone just knew what to do. And it was just all in our regular procedures.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah, so what other ah lessons that were learnt during this process may still need to be implemented, I guess, individually, but they could help councils in these sorts of situations?
00:41:01
Speaker
So I think a key role in council is the LEMO, the Local Emergency Management Officer. So the LEMO is the linkage into the the regional and state the emergency management processes. I could could go on for another hour about how emergency management works in New South Wales. area In particular, um I'm commenting only about New South Wales. here Other states do it in different ways and I don't have an understanding for those states.
00:41:27
Speaker
But if council needs help, they just need to ask for help and the help will come. I do know that ah the EPA is probably the the the main liaison point for, you know,
00:41:40
Speaker
environmental health related issues. The EPA is an operational organization whereas Department of Health do have an environmental health team but it's not as operational as the EPA and so working through the EPA is the best thing for councils to do and then the EPA can then reach out to whoever else they need from the state to address those
Conclusion: Collaboration in Environmental Emergencies
00:42:02
Speaker
issues.
00:42:02
Speaker
I can't speak to the recent situation, but I would expect there is some degree of EPA participation in some local management so like local emergency management committees. But EPA is certainly attending the regional emergency management committees, which are attended by council staff.
00:42:19
Speaker
I think the the good news from my perspective is we've had a range of floods and and fires and other natural disasters in the past few years when I'm way out of my contemporary knowledge of what the EPA is doing.
00:42:33
Speaker
And the headlines are all just really encouraging. It seems from to me that the EPA is doing a great job there, that they're working well with councils, they're working well with the other agencies. And the lessons from yeah Peter Sandman in outrage management have stuck.
00:42:47
Speaker
I don't expect to see another Kuragang Island type ah type incidents. The community has an expectation that the government will protect them from bad things happening, be it toxic chemicals or fires or floods.
00:43:01
Speaker
And i do think that in New South Wales, the state's doing a really good job there. Well, on that note, we'll wrap up today's questions and podcast. So thank you so much for being my guest. It's been a really interesting conversation that I've i've enjoyed having with you.
00:43:16
Speaker
So it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for your time. It's a pleasure, Chanel. Thanks very much for having me. That wraps up this episode of Contamination Station. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Contamination Station, Safer Environment Together, an EPA-funded podcast hosted by Chanel Gleeson-Wiley.
00:43:36
Speaker
We hope you've enjoyed our chat and been inspired to continue working towards a safer environment together. We would love for you to stick around for the next episode. So keep those headphones on, grab another cuppa and settle in for more insightful stories.