Major changes ahead: What you need to know about the Environmental Legislation Amendment Bill 2025

Onsite re-use of asbestos waste permitted

Currently section 144AAB of the POEO Act prohibits the re-use or recycling of “asbestos waste”, which is waste containing any amount of asbestos.

The consequences of this prohibition have been far reaching. For example, excavated material containing small amounts of asbestos, at concentrations below the health investigation trigger levels adopted by contaminated land professionals, have had to be disposed of at landfills. This has been recognised as contributing to the current shortage of landfill space and as being unsustainable, including by the Office of Chief Scientist NSW.¹

The Bill proposes to limit the prohibition in section 144AB to asbestos waste to that is “received from offsite”, so long as the re-use/recycling of asbestos waste is done in accordance with one of the following:

• Approved voluntary management proposal, management order or ongoing maintenance order under the Contaminated Land Management Act 1997 (CLM Act), or
• A public positive covenant or restriction imposed under the CLM Act, or
• Chapter 4 of the State Environmental Planning Policy (Resilience and Hazards) 2021, which contains the planning law assessment and approval requirements.

If passed, this amendment will enable developers to reuse asbestos waste, provided it is managed under the regime governing contaminated land and remediation works. This change has the potential to significantly reduce construction costs and ease pressure on landfill sites.

It also underscores the need to improve the notification and enforcement of Environmental Management Plans (EMPs), which are typically required by contaminated land Site Auditors when asbestos-impacted material is to be capped and contained onsite. The Bill includes reforms addressing this issue, which are discussed below.

Potential public register for EMPs

In the context of contaminated land in NSW, an Environmental Management Plan (EMP) is a document that sets out how residual contamination at a site will be safely managed post remediation. An EMP is typically required where ongoing monitoring, management, or land use restrictions are necessary to ensure that the residual contamination does not pose unacceptable risks.

Despite being widely used and serving as a key mechanism for managing risks to human health and the environment, there is currently no central register of EMPs. As a result, stakeholders such as Councils, land managers, tenants, neighbours, developers, and prospective purchasers of contaminated sites often face significant practical challenges in accessing EMPs—and may be entirely unaware of their existence. This lack of visibility can undermine the effective implementation of EMP.

Similar to the current requirements in the NSW Site Auditor Guidelines, the Bill proposes to amend the CLM Act to require site auditors to give the EPA and local council a copy a “statutory site audit statement” and any associated EMP. The EPA will then be able to establish a record of EMPs and make information about the EMP publicly available on its website.

Amendments to the duty to notify pollution

Section 148 of the POEO Act requires a person carrying on an activity to notify the relevant authority if a pollution incident causing or threatening material harm occurs. Material harm is defined as either actual or potential harm to the health or safety of human beings or to ecosystems that is not trivial, or by reference to the actual or potential loss of property damage exceeding a monetary threshold.

The Bill proposes to increase this threshold from $10,000 to $50,000. This is explained in the second reading speech as necessary as the threshold has not changed since 1997 and will bring the POEO Act into line with the tests applied in other jurisdictions.

The Bill also proposes to remove the NSW Ministry of Health as a relevant authority to whom pollution incidents need to be reported.

Expanding the reach of PEPs

The POEO Act provides the NSW EPA with the ability to make Protection of the Environment Policies (PEPs) in relation to the activities of public authorities. PEPs are instruments for setting environmental standards, goals, protocols and guidelines. Despite this power existing since the POEO Act’s inception in 1997, it was only last year that the EPA proposed its first draft PEP, being the draft Sustainable Construction PEP which is intended to guide NSW Government agencies delivering public infrastructure to consider lifecycle emissions of their projects.

The Bill proposes to expand the reach of PEPs by providing that a PEP may require any person, and not just public authorities, to take it into consideration when carrying out an activity.

Notably the Bill does not provide the EPA with an ability to enforce compliance with a PEP. The second reading speech describes the approach as to “allow the EPA to set expectations for environmental standards, drive behavioural change and improve environmental performance across industries”. However, it is foreseeable that they may be implemented by consent authorities, including during the development assessment phase.

Increased penalties and enforcement

The Bill contains a range of amendments relevant to the enforcement of the POEO Act, including the following:

• IChEMS: Including as discussed here, from 1 July the provisions in the POEO Act regarding to the implementation of the Industrial Chemicals Environmental Management Standard (IChEMS) came into effect. These provisions, amongst other things, make it an offence to fail to comply with the risk management measures specified in IChEMS, including those related to PFAS. The penalties for IChEMS related offences are proposed to be doubled to $1 million, to assist with deterring non-compliances.
• Waste offences: The POEO Act currently provides an offence of ‘repeat waste offence’. This provides that if a person has been convicted of a range of waste offences and goes on to be convicted of a second waste offence within 5 years, they could be liable for a penalty of up to 2 years imprisonment. The Bill proposes to add carrying on a scheduled waste activity such as a landfill without a licence as an offence that will count towards a repeat waste offence.
• EPA Officer Harassment: The Bill introduces an offence for harassing an EPA officer, including online, with a maximum penalty of $2 million for a corporation with an additional $240,000 for each day the offence continues. The maximum penalties for an individual at $500,000 and $120,000 for each day the offence continues.
• Additional sentencing considerations: Currently sentencing decisions for environmental offences consider the harm to the environment caused or likely to be caused by the commission of an offence, amongst other matters. The Bill proposes to allow a Court to also recognise and take into account the impact of the offence on:

• Aboriginal cultural values and practices, which are not defined.
• Environmental justice principles, which are defined to mean “principles intended to prevent or minimise, or have the effect of preventing or minimising, the disproportionate impact of environmental harm on vulnerable or disadvantaged communities or persons”.

The Bill also proposes to expand the role of executive liability, which has long been a feature of the POEO Act, by including executive liability offences for the following acts:

• Plastic Reduction and Circular Economy Act 2021
• Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Act 2001
• Product Lifecycle Responsibility Act 2025

Having regard to this suite of amendments, it is anticipated that higher penalties, with potentially more custodial sentences and personal liability, may follow.

Please contact our Environment and Planning team if you would like further information about how the changes proposed by this Bill might impact your particular situation.