Environmental incidents

We are committed to identifying and reporting environmental incidents so we can:

• improve our environmental performance and standards
• meet community expectations that our environmental performance is openly reported
• fulfil legislative obligations
• enable internal and external reporting.

The department takes its incident reporting and management responsibilities seriously. Information about the department's environmental incidents is published on Queensland Globe, a free mapping and data online interactive tool.

What is an environmental incident?

An environmental incident is where the works or activity is under the department’s supervision or control and can be defined as:

• where actual environmental harm occurs, or there is a situation where there is a real chance that environmental harm could occur
• unauthorised damage to cultural, built heritage, artefacts or shipwrecks
• unlawful under any environmental or cultural heritage legislation (except sections 319 and 320 of the Environmental Protection Act—environmental harm).

How are environmental incidents reported?

The Department of Environment Protection and Heritage (EHP) is the lead agency for environment incident management. Transport and Main Roads has a duty to notify environmental harm to EHP—this notification process does not remove any notification requirements under other commonwealth or state legislation to other agencies. For example the removal of fish habitat or spread of fire ants into an environmentally significant area would require a notification to both the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and EPH.

We have an internal system that records the identification and resolution of our incidents.