As of 1 July 2012, all holders of Environmental Protection
Licences (EPLs) in NSW must provide public access to monitoring
data recorded under each EPL that they hold.
The requirements for complying with this new obligation are set
out in the
Environmental Guidelines: Requirements for publishing pollution
monitoring data (EPA Guidelines), which were recently
issued by the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA). The
overall emphasis is on providing the data in a meaningful way that
is easy for the general public to understand. Assessing how best to
do this will vary for each licence holder and will require careful
consideration.
The new obligation
The recent Protection of the Environment Legislation Amendment
Act 2011 (NSW) introduced several changes to the
Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997
(NSW) (POEO Act) (see our
update dated 7 March 2012), including the new requirement that
all holders of EPLs must make the monitoring data recorded
