Civil penalties
The EPA recently negotiated two civil penalties totalling more than $20,000 involving companies that breached their licence conditions.
The first case involved the Director of a Para Hills transport company who agreed to pay a civil penalty of almost $6,000 for obtaining an illegal benefit from South Australia’s Container Deposit Scheme.
The settlement was negotiated by the EPA after Spectrum Transport Systems admitted to its liability over an incident that took place last year.
This was the first-ever negotiated civil penalty for the illegal redemption of beverage containers.
An EPA investigation found that a company employee was directed to cash-in more than 2,400 beverage cans who was paid a total refund of $243.30 by the Scout Recycling Centre at Greenfields.
The EPA later determined that the cans were not purchased in South Australia and therefore not authorised for a refund, contravening the Environment Protection Act 1993.
A civil penalty of $5,890.50 was paid and the company was ordered to return the containers to their state of origin in Queensland.
The EPA also negotiated another civil penalty of almost $15,000 with Integrated Waste Services (IWS) after the company admitted to a breach of its licence conditions.
Between November 2011 and July 2013, IWS received grease trap waste, liquid waste and sludge at its Wingfield site, in contravention of its EPA licence.
An EPA investigation found that although this caused no environmental harm, the company had purposely constructed special ramps to accept liquid waste at its site without licence approval.
This resulted in a negotiated penalty of $14,850.