Michael Nicholls

⚠️ Mark your calendars for 4 June 2026, or risk your WA mining and petroleum approvals hitting a hard wall. The Western Australian Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) is permanently retiring its legacy Environmental Assessment and Regulatory System (EARS).

📉 Historical baseline data will no longer cut it for your next EPBC Act referral. The National Environmental Science Program has released a new framework designed to translate complex climate data into defensible regulatory advice for Australian threatened species assessments.

Buying land for a major development? The approval pathway no longer relies on negotiating offsets after the fact. DCCEEW has released its updated framework for Bioregional Planning. This is a significant implementation milestone for the Environment Protection Reform Bills.

🔬 3 to 4 ng/L. That is all it took to cause intergenerational developmental harm in a new Australian study. Researchers at the University of Adelaide have demonstrated that trace levels of PFOS, PFOA, and PFHxS in tap water produce significant developmental effects in study organisms.

🏘️ Regulatory scrutiny is no longer reserved for tier-one infrastructure and heavy industrial sites. EPA Victoria this week issued fines to three residential homebuilders following a targeted compliance blitz across 20 building sites in Lara and Armstrong Creek.

🚜 Soil-bound contaminants might not be staying in the soil. A new study has detected Medium Chain Chlorinated Paraffins (MCCPs) drifting through the air over agricultural regions. The source is volatilisation from sewage sludge fertiliser applied directly to fields.

🏗️ Large-scale battery storage in Australia is no longer just a technology challenge. It is a dual-jurisdiction regulatory challenge, and the two rulebooks do not always align. Two major Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) developments hit critical milestones in New South Wales today.

🔋 “Too many of the battery related fires we’re seeing are preventable. These reforms are about stopping them before they start.”

NSW Environment Minister Penny Sharpe has just announced new mandatory legislation to tackle toxic waste fires.

🔥 34.9 million hectares of northern Australia spans the eligible area for a completely overhauled carbon accounting framework. The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water has officially released two new 2026 Savanna Fire Management methods under the ACCU Scheme.