Welcome back to Talking PFAS podcast.  I am a journalist and your host Kayleen Bell.  

For the next several weeks I will be bringing you episodes recorded at the International Clean Up 2022 Conference in Adelaide mid-September, hosted by CRC Care.

The Heads of EPAs of Australia and New Zealand known as (HEPA) are about to release the draft version 3.0 of the National Environmental Plan (NEMP) for public consultation. This version contains important new guidance and standards which builds on version 2.0 published in 2020.

A brief overview on the draft NEMP was presented on Monday 12/9/2022 at Clean Up Conference 2022 in Adelaide by Dr Sara Broomhall who is the National co-ordinator for the PFAS NEMP & Director of Policy Advice and Integration Section from Department of Climate Change Energy, the Environment and Water.

As well as being National co-ordinator of the PFAS NEMP Sara has also covered things such as Stockholm Convention’s global monitoring work and the OECD chemicals work which sets a lot of the global standards about how we do risk assessment of chemicals. 

The NEMP has had over 27,000 unique downloads and unique page views from over 50 countries.  In NEMP 3.0 various areas requiring attention (leftover from NEMP 2.0) have been grouped under themes, and each theme is led by a jurisdiction in Australia and has a range of other jurisdictions participating and contributing to those themes.

In brief:

Theme 1 is PFAS Family – led by QLD – which will focus on international approaches to grouping.

Theme 2 is Environmental data and monitoring – led by VIC & QLD.

Theme 3 is Water – led by SA – and will focus on risk based criteria and guidance for beneficial reuse of biosolids.

Theme 4 is Soil – led by NSW – and focuses on PFAS behaviour in soil including leaching and guideline values.

Theme 5 is Resource Recovery & Waste – led by WA – which will focus on management of risks associated with PFAS in resource recovery products.

Theme 6 is Site Specific Guidance – led by the Commonwealth – and it has three projects operating under it.  The first is a new section on approaches to remediation and management and Dr Sara Broomhall is the theme lead for that piece of work. The other two areas the Commonwealth will be responsible for is guidance on approaches to dealing with water from construction activities and then guidance on marine sediments.

Dr Sara Broomhall’s co-presenter on Monday (12/9/2022) was Dr Shaun Thomas who is a Principal Advisor for Wastewater in the SA EPA, and he is the lead on Theme 3.  He is my special guest today.

Shaun is involved in the National Chemicals Working Group which works under HEPA and works on the NEMP.  His main interest in PFAS is in biosolids and how we better manage the potential concentrations of PFAS in biosolids.  Shaun said “no two territories and states have exactly the same approach for biosolids, and they took this into consideration.  He said of the jurisdictions who had done some work already in the PFAS space QLD was the most prominent but his team also engaged quite heavily with NSW who have done a lot of work developing some guidance that hasn’t been published yet.

*UPDATE The draft NEMP version 3.0 has been released https://haveyoursay.agriculture.gov.au/nemp-on-pfas

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