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Bridging the Knowledge Gap: Dr Sophie Wood on Developing Council Expertise in Contaminated Site Management
141 Plays16 days ago
Dr. Sophie Wood is the Program Manager for the Contaminated Sites Assessment, Remediation and Management (CSARM) Short Courses at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). The CSARM course has been delivered over the past 15 years and has seen great success in upskilling the industry. In this episode, we focus on the Contaminated Site Management and Regulation Short Course (CSMR) which launched in 2024, focusing specifically on CLM for councils.
Sophie has had an extensive career in contaminated land and waste management consultancy, including 13 years as a partner at Environmental Resources Management (ERM) in Sydney. She was also a New South Wales EPA and Queensland accredited site auditor, and remains a certified environmental practitioner, site contamination specialist, under the EIANZ scheme.
Sophie holds a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences and Geology from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Geochemistry from the University of Leeds. She has worked on many major contaminated site projects, including the Barangaroo site gasworks remediation, the remediation of the gasworks beneath the new Sydney Metro station at Central Station, and for Western Sydney Airport.
She was also the lead auditor for the first draft of the revision of the 2013 NEPM schedules B4 and B7, focusing on site specific risk assessment and health based investigation levels. She is passionate about high quality teaching and learning, helping professionals strengthen their expertise in contaminated land management through the CSARM and now the CSMR courses.
In this episode, Dr. Sophie Wood discusses how training programs tailored for council staff are filling critical knowledge gaps in contaminated land management. She explains the development of the UTS CSMR Short Course, which was created in direct response to local council demand.
Sophie shares insights into common knowledge gaps among council staff, particularly in determining whether consultant reports contain enough information to support decision-making. Many council officers struggle with understanding what is critical versus "nice to have" data, and targeted training helps them focus on the most relevant aspects.
Looking ahead, Sophie warns that climate change will pose major challenges, with risks like landfill erosion, contamination spread via floods, and industrial site closures. She stresses the need for councils to prepare for emerging contaminants and future risks.
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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 Contaminated Land Network forms part of a project called “Councils Managing Contaminated Land Together” funded by the NSW Environment Protection Authority (NSW EPA) to support capacity building and informed decision-making by those involved in contaminated land management in councils.
We hope to see you on the network soon!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Contamination Station'
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Contamination Station, Safer Environment Together, a New South Wales EPA funded podcast.
Purpose and Audience of the Podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
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
Introduction of Dr. Sophie Wood
00:00:19
Speaker
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. Today we're joined by Dr. Sophie Wood, Program Manager for the Contaminated Sites Assessment, Remediation and Management Short Courses at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Contaminated Site Management Short Course
00:00:40
Speaker
The CSUM course has been delivered for 15 years now and has seen great success in upskilling the industry. But today we're focusing on the Contaminated Site Management and Regulation Short Course, or CSMR course, launched last year, focusing specifically on CLM for councils.
00:00:57
Speaker
Prior to joining UTS, Sophie had an extensive career in contaminated land and waste management consultancy, including 13 years as a partner at Environmental Resources Management or yeah ERM in Sydney.
00:01:10
Speaker
She was also a New South Wales EPA and Queensland accredited site auditor and remains a certified environmental practitioner, site contamination specialist under the EIA and ZED scheme.
00:01:21
Speaker
Sophie holds a bachelor's degree in natural sciences and geology from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in geochemistry from the University of Leeds.
Sophie's Career and Projects
00:01:30
Speaker
Sophie has worked on many major contaminated site projects, including the Barangaroo site gasworks remediation, the remediation of the gasworks beneath the New Sydney Metro Station at Central Station, and for Western Sydney Airport.
00:01:45
Speaker
She was also the lead auditor for the first draft of the revision of the 2013 NEPM schedules B4 and B7, focusing on site-specific risk assessment and health-based investigation levels.
00:01:57
Speaker
Now at UTS, she's passionate about high quality teaching and learning, helping professionals strengthen their expertise in contaminated land management through the CSUM and now the CSMR courses.
Disclaimer and Formal Introductions
00:02:10
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.
00:02:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this episode of Contamination Station, an EPA funded podcast. I'm your host, Chanel Gleason-Willie, and our guest today is Dr. Sophie Wood. Hi, Sophie. Thanks so much for your time.
00:02:34
Speaker
Hi, Chanel. It's lovely to be here. With over 30 years in the field, you must have seen significant changes in contaminated site management.
Evolution of Site Assessment Techniques
00:02:44
Speaker
How have the approaches to site assessment and remediation evolved during your career?
00:02:49
Speaker
Well, I started my consulting career 1991 in Northern England. And at that point, the UK guidance and industry were in their infancy. We had a thing called the ICRCL list of screening criteria, which was a fairly short list of soil contaminants, useful in practice, but not regulated and without a transparent scientific derivation. So one didn't know what they actually meant or whether it meant anything at all.
00:03:18
Speaker
um But we used it anyway because it's what we had. Sampling of soil and groundwater wasn't very different from how it is now in terms of how the samples were taken. ah except that we didn't have geoprobes.
00:03:31
Speaker
What we had was an awful thing called a cable percussion rig, which is a tall triangular frame, a sort of tripod thing, with a winch on the top driven by a motor. And the winch has got a cable, which is attached to a heavy weight. And winch the heavy weight up to the top of the tripod, and then you drop it on the ground.
00:03:52
Speaker
And repeated dropping makes a hole, which eventually becomes borehole because the heavy weight is a long, thin thing that drives into the ground. i'm But it's incredibly dangerous.
00:04:05
Speaker
It's not caged or anything. I would not want to be around that. No, they were horrible. And of course, it's covered in contaminated soil. So if you wanted to ah deal with the drill bit, you ended up having to manhandle it and you get completely covered in whatever was on it.
00:04:23
Speaker
ah And that safety is a thing that's improved out of sight in 30 years. We're so much better at it than we were when I started. And when we finally got geoprobes, those were a complete game changer in terms of um creating smaller boreholes and um and soil sampling.
Guidelines and Risk Assessments
00:04:43
Speaker
And that made it a lot more rigorous, a lot better in terms of how to get a decent sample and a lot safer. The small excavators we used for test pitting have been around forever, um like much, much longer than I have in terms of their use for site investigation, because it all grew from geotechnical techniques, which were already quite well developed,
00:05:07
Speaker
Also, back then, we had the US EPA early guidelines and the Dutch list. And we used we used both of those ah somewhat indiscriminately.
00:05:18
Speaker
And there wasn't a lot of consistency between what different consultancies were doing. And lots of us were making up as we went along. But to I was a ah very keen on getting my hands on all the guidance documents that I could.
00:05:34
Speaker
And it wasn't long before I taught myself an awful lot of things technically. And ah to the point where I wrote our first um quantitative risk assessment spreadsheet in Lotus 1-2-3 in 1992, using the US EPA human health evaluation manual from 1986. And I andno copied the equations in into ah Excel and automated the calculations um in just the same way as one now does much more efficiently in Excel.
00:06:04
Speaker
And it probably was 10 years before I saw another consultancy that had a similar thing. So we had soil sampling statistical theory ah published by Colin Ferguson in 1992, and that caught on very quickly. So we had grid-based sampling.
00:06:20
Speaker
We understood soil the difference between grid-based and judgmental sampling and used all those same equations that we now have in the New South Wales sampling design guidelines to decide whether we'd taken enough samples and whether our grid spacing was right and what probability of missing hotspot would be.
Remediation Methods and Innovations
00:06:41
Speaker
We also started assessing hazardous ground gas very early on in the UK because the British had a couple of nasty accidents with methane. um So although it's relatively new in Australia, it's been around a long time globally.
00:06:57
Speaker
In the UK, PFAS arrived in 2002 or 2003 at Jersey Airport. um And as now, ah we contained the source zone in an on-site containment cell and the groundwater was not too easy to do anything about. And I think I heard recently that they're still struggling with PFAS and groundwater at Jersey because the airport contaminated the island's drinking water supply.
00:07:26
Speaker
And I believe that's still an issue. Wow, 20 years later, still an issue. 20 years later and they still haven't been able to fix it um because it's, yeah, it's a deep aquifer and I think the island's totally groundwater reliant. So not an easy place to be.
00:07:41
Speaker
um Soil vapour assessment and vapour intrusion assessment, yeah, probably was started to be considered in the mid-2000s in the UK and Australia, despite the fact that Johnson and Ettinger had published their risk assessment model in 1991. It took a long time to catch on um in other places than the US.
00:08:04
Speaker
um But once it had caught on, um it developed very fast, particularly in Australia. We got we got the idea really quickly. And I guess because the Americans had already done all technical work In remediation terms, we mostly had dig and dump and pump and treat in the 90s.
00:08:24
Speaker
i We were also able to incinerate very hazardous soils and land farming was already available. But it was more volatilisation than it really was bioremediation.
00:08:37
Speaker
And then across the later 1990s and the early 2000s, lots of development in bioremediation methodology happened. We got composting and biopiles and people started to identify specific bacteria and fungi to break down specific contaminants.
00:08:55
Speaker
But since then... It hasn't really gone very far as far as I can see. um Although the research has, it's just the practice hasn't ah found anything that was more useful than what we got to and in the kind of late 2000s, late 20-somethings, 10s. Obviously some barriers in the way, I guess maybe with the land required or time required.
00:09:20
Speaker
from a practical point of view? Yeah, maybe, or maybe there just hasn't been another breakthrough. The fact that you could add nutrients and that you could control the bacterial mix made a lot of difference.
00:09:33
Speaker
So the kind of um environmental control within the bioremediation space... matters and once they got that that was a big step forward but I don't think there's been another one so maybe that explains why the what's actually being done hasn't changed very much probably only um co-remediation using a carbon source to remediate recalcitrant groundwater contaminants is is relatively new in comparison.
00:10:04
Speaker
And most of the more recent development has been in in situ remediation and thermal methods, which have become a lot more common in the last 15 or
Accessibility and Success in Remediation
00:10:14
Speaker
so years.
00:10:14
Speaker
So things like MPVE, which is now everywhere, soil vapor extraction. and When I started my career, we didn't have those. And we've also got a lot of more specialist remediation contractors and proprietary chemicals that enable us to have much more choice about who does our remediation and a much higher chance of getting someone who's actually an expert in that particular technique that we want to use.
00:10:39
Speaker
which means I should think that remediation probably more successful. I don't have any data to prove that, but but I suspect the success rate is better than than it used to be when it comes to anything, you know, outside of your dig and dump type scenario, because we've got we've got more specialization and more expertise than there used to be.
00:11:01
Speaker
um And I guess having those resources um means that there's it's more available to more consultants to utilise that, whereas before I guess it was sort of relegated to the very senior um consultants with an awful lot of experience these days.
00:11:19
Speaker
um i guess it's probably just a more available thing for for all consultants. Yeah. Yeah, i I would agree. I think i think um now you don't need to know that much to be able to purchase remediation as a package.
00:11:34
Speaker
Whereas when you couldn't just purchase remediation, you had to explain to a civil's contractor how to do it.
Development of CSMR Course
00:11:42
Speaker
And the consultant had to design it and Without a great deal of expertise, there are many techniques where attempting to design them without knowing what you're doing is liable to lead to spending a lot more money than you would need to and and maybe it not working.
00:11:59
Speaker
And I think that happened a lot. Hmm. Yeah, I agree. So as Program Director for Contaminated Site Assessment and Remediation at UTS, you've played a really key role in professional training as well as your predecessor at UTS. So can you talk me through the journey to the 2024 launch of the new Practical Contaminated Site Management and Regulation Short Courses, which have been developed specifically aimed at local council staff?
00:12:28
Speaker
Of course. um So the course was suggested by ah local council, EHO, Carly Fulton at Penrith Council in October 2022.
00:12:39
Speaker
And she emailed me out of the blue, a long email saying what she thought was necessary. And I read that and I thought that is an excellent idea. And so i i obviously thanked her for her suggestion and said, well, I'll ask around and I'll see what other people think.
00:12:55
Speaker
I did that and quickly discovered that the amount of want in the industry was huge. UTS were keen to develop something and ALGA and ah Environmental Health Australia were also really keen to pitch in.
00:13:10
Speaker
And by early 2023, we had a steering committee and we were developing a a syllabus. And that steering committee was formed mostly by people from a variety of local councils who allowed their staff to come to meetings and review documentation.
00:13:29
Speaker
So I'm going to mention them because I'm so grateful for their support. So we had City of Sydney, Sutherland, Ballina, Henrith, Inner West, Ramjo, that's the Riverina and Murray joint organisation, Liverpool, plus New South Wales, EPA and Environmental Health Australia.
00:13:47
Speaker
And between them, they basically designed the course that they wanted to see. So I had a syllabus that had really been through the mill. It had been brainstormed. It had been worked out.
00:13:58
Speaker
And all I then had to do was to go away and find lecturers to to teach it. So I set about finding guest experts from consultancies and councils to present on the the topics that are on the syllabus.
00:14:13
Speaker
And we ended up with these three one-day courses. of which trainees can choose any combination. So you can do one, two or three days and you pay per day. And each day is on a separate theme. So they're entitled modules one, two and three.
00:14:30
Speaker
Module one is a general overview that deals with the whole process of contaminated land management. Module two does the technical details of site investigation, um risk assessment, remediation and management insofar as you can in one day, which is not an amazing technical depth and it's But it's it's aimed at people reviewing reports, not at people doing it. So it's aiming to teach you to review it, not to do it, which is um which is quite a different way of looking at it.
00:15:05
Speaker
Then module three is about regulation, and that's about New South Wales regulation only, whereas the other two are generic. They're not specific to New South Wales, and anyone in Australia or New Zealand would find them perfectly relevant to their own situation.
Course Content and Differences
00:15:23
Speaker
We model the delivery on the same the same way we do the CSOM with a number of different people presenting each day. And we find that the trainees really appreciate the the real world experience that those people bring rather than listening to me all day.
00:15:40
Speaker
And a lot of the course is done in workshops and group exercises so that people learn by doing as as well as listening. And that that happened the first time in 2024. And the next one is um shortly in February this year, 2025.
00:15:58
Speaker
So you mentioned and and the CSUM course. So that's the Contaminated Site Assessment, Remediation and Management course that's been run by UTS for quite some time now. And it's been very, very successful, but obviously isn't targeted at local council.
00:16:15
Speaker
um So this new program, the CSMR course, is targeted at local councils. Can you give me just an understanding of... What's the difference between the two courses?
00:16:29
Speaker
So the main difference is in the way that the presented material is is dealt with and the the angle that it comes from. So the CSAM courses are designed to help consultants do their jobs.
00:16:43
Speaker
And so they're all about how to do it properly. So how to do site investigation, how to take samples, how to design a remediation, how to create a conceptual site model, how to write a report.
00:16:57
Speaker
Whereas if you're a council officer, you aren't doing those things. You're reading the outcome report from a consultant having done those things. And what you need to know is not how to do the activity, but how to tell whether the activity has been done properly by reviewing the report that you've got in front of you and whether that report has sufficient data in it to make the decision that the report is purporting to make.
00:17:24
Speaker
And so we're concentrating in the council's courses on that scenario, assuming that our trainees are in that position where they're reviewing reports as as part of the job that they do, and that they then have to make some kind of decision like, are they going to attempt to control that with a development consent condition, or are they going to have to ask for more information?
00:17:47
Speaker
So we're teaching them to ah be more confident in believing that but that that they've got enough knowledge to do those things rather than could I go out and take a good sample, for example.
00:18:00
Speaker
m Now, in and my career, I've noticed that one of the other really important skills that everybody needs to know, but particularly council and regulator staff, ah it's what questions to ask at the very front end of a project. So when you're writing the scope of works for you know for a project or requesting a quote from a consultant, it's What questions to ask to eventually end up with the right answers that you need at the other end.
00:18:29
Speaker
Does this course help with that knowledge as well? it It does in that we we concentrate a fair bit on what data is required to make a specific decision and how to work through that. So we do we do go through things like data quality objectives where we look at understanding what it is you're trying to find out and what data gaps are you trying to fill.
00:18:55
Speaker
And we use the concept of conceptual site model in order to help people understand how to know what they do know and what they don't know and articulate that in a reasonably efficient way.
00:19:07
Speaker
So knowing what knowing what's been done and what hasn't been done. um and crucially knowing what you need to know to make a particular decision and uh because that's a task that site auditors are also doing we we do use site auditors in this course to to talk about how to know whether the report that you've got deals with the the right information or whether it's missing big chunks of things that it ought to have and that's partly about knowing the guidance, but it's also about knowing what's important and what's not important. So the guidance has got great big long lists of things in it that reports ought to have.
00:19:50
Speaker
But there's two kinds of things in that guidance. There's the absolute must-haves to make your decision, and then there's a whole bunch of nice-to-haves. And if you're a council officer and your time is limited, knowing which ones are the must-haves so that you can go through those and just pick on them to ask more questions about much more productive than trying to do an audit job on it and tick every single thing off, some of which you may not actually need to know to make your decision.
Challenges and Solutions for Council Staff
00:20:17
Speaker
then What are the biggest knowledge gaps that you see in council staff who are managing contaminated land? I think it's mostly that question of do I know enough? And that's about technical depth across the whole process. So council staff don't normally have time to read enough of the details of the technical guidance to really have that all in their head.
00:20:43
Speaker
at the same time. It's it's a very time-consuming process to get that familiar with the guidance, particularly if you're someone who's never applied it in practice um because they've not maybe done consultancy previous to their council job. A lot of people haven't. A lot a lot have, but many also haven't.
00:21:01
Speaker
And that business about it being... not that clear in people's heads what is and isn't important is ah quite a big thing, I think, for council staff.
00:21:13
Speaker
um And they find it very difficult to tell whether the report's good enough to make ah to make that decision and whether, yeah, is there enough or is there not enough? And if there's not enough, what is there not enough of?
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess if they're if they worry that there is maybe too much as well, like, you know, is has it gone too far? Can we pay this back? would be another good question to be able to answer.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yes, I think that's true because nobody wants to, no one wants to go over the top. And, you know, sometimes if you ask for too much, you're slowing things down unnecessarily.
00:21:53
Speaker
And no one wants to do that because, you know, everyone's got deadlines. o Yeah, definitely. um in the the planning process with, you know, development applications and that sort of thing is, you know, very strict deadlines as well.
00:22:08
Speaker
So how can targeted training help bridge these gaps to improve compliance and decision making? So, you know, with this course, how does it ah does it go about doing that? Mostly it's about the expertise of the people that are presenting and having the opportunity to hear those experts talk about how they do it in their jobs and These things aren't in the guidance.
00:22:33
Speaker
um And they the top tips that are able to be delivered by experts, for example, many auditors I know review a report by starting at the back with the appendices and they look at the data tables and they look at the site plan and they look at the borehole logs and they form their own opinion before reading what the consultant had to say in the report about what the issues on this site might be.
00:23:01
Speaker
And that enables them to then go to the report and read it and see if the report is dealt with what they would expect it to have dealt with based on having looked at the data.
Networking and Industry Connections
00:23:12
Speaker
So you don't get your you don't get your mind changed by persuasive but perhaps not very well supported by the evidence argument in advance.
00:23:21
Speaker
That's a very popular way amongst auditors of reviewing a report efficiently. And ah we have a lot of other people sharing their top tips, if you like, to help people save time when they're reviewing reports.
00:23:37
Speaker
reports and to concentrate on the things that matter. People also learn lots from each other because we have such a lot of group work and workshops. ah People are able to form networks and talk to the other trainees.
00:23:52
Speaker
about how they approach those problems. And so people often learning as much from the other trainees as they are from the experts. And I think that's a very positive aspect of the course too. it It's people in contact with one another and maybe gives them someone that they can ring up if they need to bounce something off someone informally in future.
00:24:15
Speaker
Hmm. That's always great to have just a comfortable relationship with yeah other people in our industry that we can yeah talk to and you don't feel silly ring up and saying, hey, I've got this question. I know it might be a bit, you know, ah sounds like a silly question, but I don't know the answer. Yeah. So we need those people.
00:24:33
Speaker
We do. Exactly. And you can't necessarily just call an auditor and ask that question. No. It depends what your question is.
Training Options and Future Programs
00:24:45
Speaker
So councils are responsible for ensuring staff are properly trained, and they always have been, and to understand when to require further assessment of land and then interpret the findings from consultants, um as well as potentially managing council-owned contaminated land, and you as we've just discussed.
00:25:04
Speaker
But prior to the UTS course, what certifications or training used to be available to council staff? I think little or nothing, in fact.
00:25:15
Speaker
And apart from the CSMR courses, I think there still isn't. So as far as I know, there's no other university or TAFE offering training aimed at councils on contaminated land.
00:25:28
Speaker
There are a couple offering specialist training in particular areas that are aimed at consultants and people in industry. So we have Flinders University Groundwater School and we have Edith Cowan University's toxicology course.
00:25:45
Speaker
But I suspect those are more specialists than most councils would be in need of. If you're in Victoria or Queensland, the ACLCA, which is the Australian Contaminated Land Consultants Association, ah both have a series of ah eight or nine half-day courses that run across the year.
00:26:04
Speaker
And those cover all the aspects of contaminated land management. So there'll be courses on preliminary site investigation, courses on detailed site investigation, remediation, risk assessment,
00:26:17
Speaker
site management plans, all of those kinds of things. They are aimed at consultants um and they don't provide formal certification. But ah if access to council offices is available, and I'm pretty sure it is in Queensland, not so sure about Victoria, I think those would be quite useful too to councils to get more technical knowledge, but not a formal qualification and not necessarily happening every year.
00:26:43
Speaker
um What else there is depends on where you are to some extent. I know there's one um environmental health undergraduate degree at Western Sydney Uni that has a course in contaminated land in it.
00:26:58
Speaker
And if you've been lucky enough to do that degree, then as an EHO, you'd at least have some background. As far as I know, there isn't a planning degree in Australia that has contaminated land course in it.
00:27:11
Speaker
And um general environmental science and engineering degrees occasionally have something, but mostly they don't. So the chances are whatever your degree was in, you haven't had much prior experience.
00:27:22
Speaker
So unless as a council officer, you've been a consultant, you've probably got very little experience. um If you're not provided with with some kind of training.
00:27:33
Speaker
In a DIY sense, there's lots of information on the and internet. Again, not providing certifications, but available to improve your mind should you choose to do so.
00:27:43
Speaker
Like the Regional Capacity Building Program, and New South Wales EPA's website has some great stuff, including an excellent free groundwater course. which is, so yeah, it's just it's a pre-recording. That's very good.
00:27:58
Speaker
ah But most of these are quite hard to find if you don't know they exist. So you do have to shop around a bit and take some time if you want to find additional training. And as far as I know, uts is the only one offering a certificate.
00:28:12
Speaker
and I guess, in dedicated short courses ah that are, we have multiple modules. So and I know that like if, for example, you're doing a master's, which is a like an open master's where you can sort of choose lots of different topics from lots of different areas.
00:28:29
Speaker
A couple of universities have contaminated land um subjects that you could choose to do, but that's a much longer term, you know, and a bigger
Value of UTS Courses
00:28:39
Speaker
commitment. Absolutely, they do. And if you if you knew what you were doing, there are several universities where you'd be able to create a master's course, which would give you a really good grounding in contaminated g land.
00:28:53
Speaker
But you'd need to already know what that was to design that. So I could do it, but I don't know if your average postgraduate student coming out of their whatever it was degree would be able to. I think they could if they had someone in the industry guiding their hand as to what they chose.
00:29:13
Speaker
But the the lecturers won't necessarily be able to do it because they probably don't know what the contaminated land industry wants either. Nope, I can assure you they don't.
00:29:25
Speaker
um but So it we' spoken about, I guess, reviewing reports and oversight of management of contaminated land. But how do programs like the UTS CSMR short course help council staff navigate the complexity of contaminated land regulations?
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, this one is a really ah very council-specific question. ah And we we actually have a whole day dedicated to exactly that, which is module three, which is called Better Contaminated Land Regulation.
00:29:56
Speaker
And eat it's a New South Wales... regulatory course and designed exactly for councils doing contaminated land regulation in New South Wales.
00:30:08
Speaker
And we have a series of ah experts from legal practices, and councils and site auditors who explain various aspects of how the legislation operates, what the powers and duties are that councils have in regulating contaminated land and how to use those powers to best effect.
00:30:26
Speaker
So, for example, we deal with how to write an effective ah development consent condition. We deal with how to know whether the waste regulations have been complied with and and how to how to spot it when they haven't.
00:30:42
Speaker
We do some case law on what's happened in practice. when environmental laws haven't been complied with, including when um councils have been sued for abuse of process when they haven't followed their duties. There's a number of cases where that's where that's happened, where appeals have been upheld because the council's not used the process properly.
00:31:05
Speaker
So all of these things are designed to help councils understand what it is that they're required to do and what it is that they can do ah and to understand the complexities of navigating between the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, the Protection of the Environment Operations Act, Contaminated Land Management Act um and the waste regime, all of which have interactions within the space that council is operating.
00:31:35
Speaker
And I think that we're unique here. as a university in doing that kind of course. I don't think there's anywhere else in Australia you'd be able to get something that was so specific.
00:31:48
Speaker
ah But of course, we're only doing it for New South Wales. um I would love to be able to do it for Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia at least, but that's not yet to become a thing.
00:31:59
Speaker
So if participants do um this one module or they end up doing all three, what can they expect to get out of the courses? So each day they're going to see six to eight different experts on different aspects of topics of the day.
00:32:16
Speaker
They're able to ask questions at any point during course. It's all online, so everyone's in very equal space. People can ask questions. They also get the presenter's contact details.
00:32:29
Speaker
And if they agree to be um on the contacts list, they'll get each other's contact details. So after the course, you've got a big pool of people that you can talk to about contaminated land issues.
00:32:43
Speaker
Between the lectures, which are mostly listening um of between, say, half an hour and an hour, um we break that up with workshops and exercises where participants work in groups to complete tasks.
00:32:58
Speaker
We have some discussions, reviews, case studies, Practicing making decisions, practicing developing conceptual models, practice looking at data.
00:33:09
Speaker
um And learning by doing really makes a difference, and as does talking to people in other councils, your fellow trainees, about how they approach various issues.
00:33:20
Speaker
And sometimes just knowing that someone's got the same problem as you is really helpful. And you make a lot of contacts, you know, helping people form networks between councils of people they can contact for advice or even just seek sympathy from.
Success and Support of UTS Courses
00:33:37
Speaker
So we've aimed in developing these courses to take a balanced overview which cover the essentials for council work. ah We don't assume any level of prior knowledge, so you don't have to know anything in particular to attend these. And if you had absolutely no contaminated land experience at all, ah you would be just fine here.
00:33:57
Speaker
It really doesn't assume anything. And it's important that in all of this, in all of these courses, the focus is on review and response to consultants reports rather than actually doing the work.
00:34:11
Speaker
And I think this aspect is what makes the the CSMR courses different from anything else on the market, as far as I know. So we've been discussing the CSMR courses, um but UTS has been running the CSARM or the Contaminator Site Assessment, Remediation and Management course for a long time now.
00:34:32
Speaker
ah You've been managing it for a while and um your predecessor did it for, I believe, 15 years before you. What sort of success have you seen by delivering this program over so many years?
00:34:45
Speaker
So I think CSAM started in 2009. So this is probably its 15th year. And I started as program director in 2022, taking over from ah Dr. Alex Borkovnik, who ran it for many, many years.
00:34:59
Speaker
And its original purpose was to provide a course to raise the technical standard of consulting in New South Wales. And it was then and still is strongly supported by New South Wales EPA.
00:35:12
Speaker
And the course is run once a year. Each one of them is a three-day course ah or a two-and-a-half-day course. Some of them include a field trip. and And since COVID, they're all available either to to attend in person or online.
00:35:29
Speaker
And um one of the big successes we've had since COVID is to increase the numbers of people who are attending almost doubled them, in fact, by out by making it happen online as well as in person every year because it means that people who aren't here, aren't here in Sydney physically, are able to attend. So that's people out in the regions, people from other states.
00:35:55
Speaker
We've had New Zealanders. We've had international people, even as far away as India, for whom the time zone is punishing. i so there's So there's a lot of people wanting these courses and I i guess word has gradually spread, although I would say that they're far better known in New South Wales than they are in other states.
00:36:19
Speaker
I think until we started offering them online and until... I started doing things like um talking about them in in nationally focused conferences.
00:36:32
Speaker
I don't think a lot of people in Victoria and Queensland and Western Australia would have known about them. Whereas, um funnily enough, the process of developing the CSMR courses for councils has increased the reach of CSOM as well by it becoming clear to people who didn't previously know outside of New South Wales that UTS was doing a lot of contaminated land teaching. So that's been really good.
00:37:02
Speaker
And COVID for all its traumas had a very beneficial effect in the long term. I think the other secret of success is the fact that it's reliably there year on year.
00:37:16
Speaker
And it means that it can be budgeted for. The industry knows that the CSR and course is going to happen. They know that they can send their staff there every year. And that as well is unusual in the whole training and development space in contaminated land because most of everything else that's available um outside of the few degree courses is it's ad hoc.
00:37:41
Speaker
So sometimes happens, sometimes doesn't. You can't guarantee what subject it will be on And so that's not really a basis for a structured training program if you're a consultant. whereas the CSUN courses are.
00:37:53
Speaker
And I think that's so that's a big reason for why ah it's been so successful. The other thing is the general togetherness of the industry in New South Wales. I think it's it's contributed to the mutual support network that we've got in contaminated land,
00:38:14
Speaker
The course is completely dependent on the generosity of the the the consultants and the New South Wales EPA, ah all of whom contribute their senior staff's time to develop and present ah parts of the courses.
00:38:30
Speaker
And we don't pay commercial consulting rates for their time. What they get is probably less than half than most of them charge on an hourly basis. We don't reimburse them for all the time that it takes them to develop the courses as well as deliver them.
00:38:43
Speaker
So what they get is a token at best of the amount of time that they're really putting in. And we need to be able to do that if we want to be able to offer the courses at a rate that people can afford.
00:38:56
Speaker
But of course, it's those same consultants who are sending their staff to be trained. So they're benefiting as well as giving. And they're also ah potentially...
00:39:07
Speaker
being able to identify possible new recruits by lecturing on those courses as they get to meet ah the participants, um some of whom and they'll think might be good employees in the future. And of course, it works the other way around too.
00:39:21
Speaker
The participants get to meet the experts, some of whom may become their employers at some point in the future. And so we've got this cycle of of mutual support and everyone contributing to the improvement of the greater good, which I find incredibly rewarding.
00:39:38
Speaker
And I think it's really important aspect of what we're doing as a contribution to the way that the industry works in general. And I would very much hope that the council's courses will develop into the same kind of thing, with council seeing that it's in their interests to contribute to the continuation of good quality teaching with good experienced people to enable them to be able to send their own staff on on those same courses.
Future Challenges and Professional Development
00:40:07
Speaker
Yeah, it is such a nice industry to be a part of. um And yeah, contributing, um giving back to the industry has you know benefits everybody, as you've said. So looking ahead, what do you anticipate is the biggest challenges in contaminated land management that councils um ideally should be preparing for now?
00:40:27
Speaker
Well, what could I possibly say except climate change? The big one. The big one. ah The thing that affects everything. So ah climate change from ah from a council perspective, the effects we might expect to see happening on contaminated land, things like erosion of landfills and on-site containment cells,
00:40:50
Speaker
Slopes collapsing, landfills collapsing into the ocean or into rivers, being eroded by floodwater, contaminated soils being transported around by floodwater and ending up in places that they weren't before.
00:41:03
Speaker
Bushfires releasing asbestos fibres if those sir if those bushfires start to impact on buildings, and Closure of coal mines, coal-fired power stations, probably increasing closures of manufacturing industries, which whilst they may not be directly effects of climate change, they're certainly the knock-on effects of how our e economy's going and where our energy mix is likely to be coming from.
00:41:32
Speaker
We'll also find in um in terms of things like agricultural production that what it's economic to do will start to change more quickly probably as some kinds of agriculture become impossible because it's become too hot and too dry and conversely some other kinds of agriculture becoming more favourable.
00:41:54
Speaker
So we might expect to see councils getting different. If you're in a rural area, you might start to see different things being grown, different chemicals being used, which which might have an an effect on what you were required to regulate.
00:42:09
Speaker
And the other thing is the increasing amounts of guidance, increasing needs for technical expertise in being able to understand ah the implications of things like more emerging contaminants, things like pharmaceuticals.
00:42:25
Speaker
You know, we've been struggling with PFAS for years. ah the last decade or so. And there's a few more things coming down the line, which hopefully won't have as profound an effect on us as PFAS has had, but will certainly be ah headache for those that are having to deal with them.
00:42:43
Speaker
Because, of course, we don't have we that have guideline levels for spillage of pharmaceuticals. And if you have such a thing, ah what to do about it is currently fairly unclear.
00:42:56
Speaker
So in terms of the ongoing professional development of council staff, do you have any recommendations for people who may have completed your three courses and are looking for something else to continue with?
00:43:09
Speaker
I'd say for most people, the best thing to do next after the CSMR courses would be the CSAM courses. And you might pick and choose as to which ones you want, depending on what you actually do.
00:43:21
Speaker
But certainly the overview course module A would likely be really good for councils as it it does a little bit more than the CSMR courses will do.
00:43:33
Speaker
um then the one on site assessment, the one on remediation and the one on understanding contaminants of concern which would also be um likely quite useful for most people.
00:43:46
Speaker
We do have a risk assessment course too. I doubt that many council officers would find that useful. It depends how many risk assessments you see, possibly some of the metropolitan councils.
00:43:57
Speaker
might find being able to have a better confidence in being able to read risk assessment and understanding what it means i'm would be would be benefited by by that course.
00:44:08
Speaker
um So I'd say CSOM first. um After that, I'd probably, um if you're in Victoria or Queensland, ah i I'd go see if ACLCA works.
00:44:21
Speaker
ah will let you attend some of their short courses. um And you can also join ALGA, of course, which gives you i'm opportunity to attend lots of in-person events and webinars. And there's an ALGA chapter in every every state.
00:44:38
Speaker
So that's open to everybody. And the networking you can get through ALGA is also pretty good. You're meeting lots of other people in the industry. And unlike ACLCA, ALGA membership not limited to consultants. And there are lots of non-consultants who are members of ALGA, including me, as I'm now a non-consultant too.
00:44:57
Speaker
There's also a lot of really good stuff on the web. So ah lots of ah international organizations offering recorded webinars. So the IRTC is extremely good and covers a very wide range of topics. That's the interstate...
00:45:15
Speaker
Retraining and, oh, it might be ITRC, Interstate Training and Regulatory Centre, I think its acronym stands for. But that has great training and you can access that any time.
Conclusion and Future Episodes
00:45:27
Speaker
And CRC Care also has so training courses that they offer, although those are those are quite ad hoc and it depends whether what they're offering at any one time is something that you're interested in, but it's definitely worth looking at.
00:45:41
Speaker
um and signing up to their newsletter to find out what they're up to. And we can't forget about the New South Wales EPA and LG New South Wales um Contaminated Land Networking Group. So if council officers aren't a part of that group, then they can definitely contact LG New South Wales and and get on board with them with the networking group because that is an excellent source of obviously networking but also training and just general support.
00:46:10
Speaker
Absolutely. There's a wealth of information on the yeah local government New South Wales website. It's really good. Well, thank you very much for being my guest today, Sophie. It's been an absolute pleasure. That wraps up this episode of Contamination Station.
00:46:23
Speaker
Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Contamination Station, Safer Environment Together, an EPA funded podcast hosted by Chanel Gleason Wiley.
00:46:35
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.