EPA organisation

The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) leads the state's response to regulating a diverse range of activities that can have an impact on the health of the NSW environment and its people. The EPA uses a combination of tools including education, partnerships, licensing and approvals, audit, and enforcement and economic mechanisms, to achieve better environmental outcomes.

A reconstituted EPA Board was established, effective 29 February 2012. Board members appointed at that time were Mr Alec Brennan, Ms Christine Covington, Mr Chris Knoblanche and Ms Julie Savet Ward, with Mr Steve Garrett as Acting Chair.

On 2 April 2012, Mr Barry Buffier was appointed Chair and CEO.

One of the first tasks undertaken was to develop a Vision Statement and Strategic Plan (EPAStrategicPlan2012.pdf, 45KB). This was to provide clarity to staff about their priorities and let stakeholders know the outcomes that are important to the EPA.

The new vision adopted for the EPA is 'Healthy environment, Healthy community, Healthy business'. This reflects the objects of the legislation under which the EPA operates and gives a clear message about what the organisation is striving to achieve.

Six Key Result Areas are identified in the plan:

  • Improve planning decisions
  • Reduce environmental impacts and improve environmental outcomes
  • Responsive incident management
  • Reduce waste and increase recycling
  • Improve communication, stakeholder engagement and knowledge management
  • Be an exemplar organisation.

The strategic planning process identified that the EPA needed more focus on stakeholder engagement and, as a consequence, the new position of Director Stakeholder Engagement and Governance was established. This will ensure improved stakeholder relationships through better communication and more opportunity for feedback. Strong and productive relationships with stakeholders are fundamental to the future success of the EPA. Both the Strategic Plan and the new organisational structure reflect this thinking.

The EPA's organisational structure (130411EPAorg.pdf, 72KB) (A3 size) provides a summary of the EPA Executive’s areas of responsibility and their contact details to assist in the direct resolution of any issues that may arise.

The EPA has also been provided with enhanced regulatory capacity to ensure that it is able to perform effectively. Specific changes to the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (POEO Act) include:

  • requiring immediate notification of a pollution incident to all relevant authorities
  • doubling to $2 million the maximum penalty for failure to notify a pollution incident in accordance with the requirements of the POEO Act
  • requiring licensees to prepare and implement pollution incident response management plans
  • requiring licensees to publish monitoring results or otherwise make them available to the public
  • new explicit powers for the EPA and Ministry of Health to require, in certain instances, payment for an analysis of the human health and environmental risks arising from an incident
  • expanded powers to require a mandatory environmental audit
  • expanded information to be included on the public registers of Appropriate Regulatory Authorities website.

The statement of business ethics (EPAStatementBusEthics.pdf, 58.3KB) describes EPA’s commitment to conducting its business on a sound commercial and ethical basis.

Page last updated: 18 April 2013