Surrendering an Environmental Authority

If you hold an environmental authority you may, at any time, apply to surrender your environmental authority voluntarily.

If you no longer require an environmental authority for your environmentally relevant activity, you should make a surrender application. If you do not surrender your environmental authority you will continue to be charged your annual fee.

To make a surrender application, you should submit an Application to Surrender an Environmental Authority to Council for your environmental authority. If you never commenced operation, a statutory declaration stating that the activity was not carried out must be included in your application.

If the activity was carried out, you must provide a compliance statement for your environmental authority in your surrender application. A compliance statement must state the extent to which the activities have complied with the conditions of your environmental authority.

There are also further requirements if your environmental authority contains conditions that require rehabilitation be carried out. In this case, you must also provide a final rehabilitation report with your surrender application.

If you are required to submit a final rehabilitation report as part of your surrender application, you must also include a statement in your compliance statement regarding the accuracy of the final rehabilitation report.

Before approving a surrender application, Council will want to make sure that:

• The site has been adequately managed in accordance with the environmental authority conditions
• Any land on which you have been carrying out activities has been satisfactorily rehabilitated or suitably managed. 

Environmental Authority Surrender Application Form(PDF, 347KB)

Final rehabilitation reports

Surrender applications for environmental authorities that contain rehabilitation conditions must include a final rehabilitation report.

This report must include enough information to allow Council to decide whether you have complied with the conditions of your environmental authority and satisfactorily rehabilitated the land on which you carried out each relevant activity for the environmental authority.

You can submit this report by completing the final rehabilitation report form and attaching it to your surrender application. Please contact the Environment and Public Health Unit of Council for a copy of the relevant form.

Read more about final rehabilitation reports for resource activities other than mining.