February Policy Update

Guidance material to support implement of General Environment Duty under the EP Act

We are still waiting to receive feedback from the EPA on the approach to GED proposed in draft flow charts.  We are hopeful that we will receive this feedback prior to the end of February 2022.

Once the feedback has been received, the flow charts will be finalised as quickly as possible, along with supporting documentation.

Practical guidance documents to support the implementation of EPA revised guideline for water recycling

The consultants have advised that the outputs/feedback from Workshop 1 (held in November 2021) will be circulated by mid-February 2022.  It is still the plan to start scheduling the other workshops by late February 2022.

Cost of compliance project

Since the last update, the consultancy for this project has been finalised (Inxure Strategy Group, supported by Frontier Economics), a Project Control Group has been put in place, which will be meeting for the first time on Wednesday 9 February, and the first workshop of project will be held on Thursday 17 February.

Additionally, the consultants are in the process of organising a series of interviews with key stakeholders.

Proposed changes to the Workplace Exposure Standards for Hydrogen Sulfide

VicWater is waiting from a response from WorkSafe regarding the letter that was sent to them in November 2021 on this issue.

Beyond that, VicWater attended a meeting of WSAA’s working group on this issue on Friday 28 January.  VicWater will continue to provide what support it can to WSAA’s working group on this issue.