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Environment Protection Act 1970

The Environment Protection Act 1970 was at its inception only the second Act in the world to deal with the whole of the environment in a systematic and integrated way. The Act is outcome oriented, with a basic philosophy of preventing pollution and environmental damage by setting environmental quality objectives and establishing programs to meet them. Over the years the Act has evolved to keep pace with the world's best practice in environment protection regulation and to meet the needs of the community.

Key aims of the Act include sustainable use and holistic management of the environment, ensuring consultative processes are adopted so that community input is a key driver of environment protection goals and programs and encouraging a co-operative approach to environment protection.

To help achieve these aims, the following Principles of Environment Protection were added to the Act in 2001:

  • integration of economic, social and environmental considerations;
  • precautionary principle;
  • intergenerational equity;
  • conservation of biological diversity and ecological integrity;
  • improved valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms;
  • shared responsibility;
  • product stewardship;
  • wastes hierarchy;
  • integrated environmental management;
  • enforcement; and
  • accountability.

Such concepts parallel those included in the National Strategy on Ecologically Sustainable Development and the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment (IGAE).

Changes made to the Act by the Environment Protection (Resource Efficiency) Act 2002 were designed to help all sectors of the Victorian community to continue to find innovative ways of using resources more efficiently and to reduce the ecological impact.

The Act establishes the powers, duties and functions of EPA. These include the administration of the Act and any regulations and orders made pursuant to it, recommending State environment protection policies (SEPPs) and industrial waste management policies (IWMP) to the Governor in Council, issuing works approvals, licences, permits, pollution abatement notices and implementing National Environment Protection Measures (NEPMs).

EPA's statutory functions under the Environment Protection Act 1970 include:

The Environment Protection Act 1970 is available online at the Victorian Law Today Library external site link. Hard copies (paper) are available from the Information Victoria Bookshop external site linkand for viewing at the EPA Victoria Library.

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