The Western Australian Government made a recent announcement to move forward with the Reduced Reporting Burden Pilot project. This will help to reduce mineral licence reporting requirements.
The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies have commented that the new measures would make an improvement to the efficiency of the reporting process in Western Australia.
The new initiative is to help ease the significant pressure Western Australia’s mining and mineral exploration sector is putting on the government and industry.
The pilot program will aim to stop or halve environmental reporting requirements for lower-risk industry licences.
According to the pilot program, licences eligible for reduced mineral licence reporting requirements include:
- licences with no monitoring requirements will no longer require annual environmental reports
- licences with limited monitoring requirements will move to environmental reports every two years.
Licences that will continue to require annual environmental reporting include those that require comprehensive monitoring and have several environmental issues, multiple monitoring points, complex monitoring suites and/or high frequency monitoring.
These changes will affect up to 60% of current eligible licences.
“These sensible changes will reduce the Government’s administrative burden while ensuring strong environmental protections remain in place.
“AMEC has been a strong advocate for significant regulatory reform and for better efficiency around environmental reporting. With less red tape for lower risk license holders, this program is a positive outcome for the mining and exploration industry,” said AMEC Chief Executive Warren Pearce.