Cirrus to sand
Support for Rural and Regional Councils
Managing Risk
The issues of the environment, climate change, waste, recycling and greenhouse gas reduction are becoming significant challenges for all Councils to grasp and manage, but they do not need to be.
“The Environment” is about where Occupational Health and Safety was about 20 years ago. It impacted few, compliance was in its early stages, and there were few repercussions for a business or director who failed to do what was best for their employees. Now, however, everyone is aware of their impacts on the environment, including native vegetation, air and water quality, waste management, recycling, and reducing our impact on the natural world.
For Councils, this means incorporating environmental considerations into risk management, planning, asset management, Council reports, and construction.
Environment Risks and Planning
There are risks to the environment and risks from the environment.
Risks to the environment include damage to native vegetation by the Council, contractors, and residents, as well as pollution of natural water bodies.
Risks from the environment include dust, heat, wind and stormwater.
Both can be assessed and reviewed, and mitigation planning can be incorporated into all assets and activities, including climate change scenarios, simultaneously.
Climate Change Risk Assessment
Preparing for climate change is good risk management and is becoming a requirement for good asset and infrastructure management.
Incorporating Climate Change Risk Scenarios into asset planning and throughout the Council is not an onerous task. It can target the most likely scenarios a Council could face, rather than every threat. This work will prepare the Council for the future, insurance, compliance, reporting and confidence in planning.
Asset Management
Including climate change and environmental considerations in asset management planning is best practice, ensuring future-proofing for Council.
Including climate change and environmental considerations into asset management planning is not complicated and can be easily accomplished by considering local hazards.
Construction
When Council or contractors undertake construction, a plan to prevent environmental impacts will help reduce problems later. This could prevent issues such as noise, dust, waste, sediment escape, and damage to environmental assets that are under the Council’s care and control.
Planning, Stormwater and WSUD
Ideally, town planning should consider all of the dynamics discussed here. Managing stormwater with Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) to reduce flooding can be integrated with increasing green space and creating a cooler urban environment, which helps mitigate climate change. Town planning and infrastructure should consider more than footpaths and roads, the black and grey, and include the green opportunities on verges.
Rivers and Coasts
Councils are obliged to manage their stormwater to reduce and remove sediment, waste and chemicals from the runoff, preventing polluting the water bodies they adjoin. The normal solutions are gross pollutant traps, which are costly, can be difficult to maintain and challenging to clean. A better way is to make use of the rainwater where it falls through WSUD, which reduces the volumes of water the drainage infrastructure must deal with and delivers other benefits discussed elsewhere, of allowing more vegetation, cooling and stormwater management. And, of course, not polluting the natural waters used by residents and industry.
Training and Knowledge
Environment
Councils are as obliged to look after all their natural assets, such as roadside vegetation, as they are to maintain roads and manage rubbish. It is in a council’s best interest to provide as much green space as possible and to manage water flow similarly.
When these assets are managed together, a Council can enhance its “liveability”, mitigate flooding problems, reduce water demands for its gardens and reserves, and serve as a benchmark for other Councils.
Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Understanding climate change and greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to managing these issues effectively.
The Local Government Association offers training modules for elected members, executive, and senior staff, which can be delivered by someone knowledgeable and experienced in this field.
waste and recycling
Domestic waste management, improved recycling rates, and better sorting can save your Council money through lower costs associated with managing recyclable products and organic waste.
Water
Using water where it falls is a standard practice of farmers and is the smart way to use water in a Council. The benefits are:
- Better stormwater control
- Less localised flooding
- The opportunity to plant more trees with less watering
- Reduced costs in stormwater infrastructure
- More opportunities for Council staff to increase capacity
- A cooler and greener Council
- More attractive locations on every street
- A nicer place to live
- Less polluted water entering water bodies
Planning, compliance, reporting
Environment
Every rural Council needs an Environment Plan. There are roads with native vegetation, impacts from construction, and considerations for managing stormwater, as well as parks, reserves, and gardens, all of which reflect how your residents value their environment. If you are a River Murray Council or a Council with a coastline, do you understand your obligations to managing that asset? Is the environment a consideration in your housing needs and planning to address issues as they arise?
Councils are required to manage their natural assets equally to their built assets, and this may mean valuing roadside trees as much as the roads they grow along. An Environment Management Plan can make all of these issues an asset, not a challenge.
Climate Change
Whether you believe in Climate Change or not doesn’t matter; many other organisations do, and they will use that to put pressure on you.
Examples include insurance companies that will expect to see climate change impacts incorporated into your planning, ensuring your Council is prepared for changes in temperature or rainfall. Are you considering the effects of temperature on roads, assets, infrastructure, staff and residents? In the same way that hotels needed to manage smoking by patrons on staff to avoid litigation, Councils need to be aware of climate impacts on many aspects under their care and control. By showing a climate change readiness plan and funding to manage for the future, you put yourself in a strong position moving forward and reduce the likelihood of future premium increases.
What are your adaptation and mitigation plans to manage your contribution to climate change? Do you understand the difference?
The environment did not cause climate change, so the environment cannot fix it. Planting trees is beneficial, but we would need to plant thousands of trees every year to absorb the GHG emissions of a large company or Council, let alone the GHG emissions produced while the trees grow. Therefore, it is necessary to find alternative ways to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Greenhouse gas Reporting
Depending on the size, scale, and nature of your Council, you are required to report annually to the Clean Energy Regulator according to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007. This means your Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, which include all of your energy, fuel, water, and waste management totals. And soon this will include Scope 3, which are the greenhouse gas emissions that others produce for the goods that you consume, such as paper, airline travel, accommodation and many other business aspects. In 2025, this applies to very large companies and organisations. Over the next few years, the thresholds are expected to decrease. Thresholds are based on annual turnover, employee numbers and assets. Many medium and small Councils will breach the asset base limits and will need to report soon; all Councils will be required to report by 2030, irrespective of size, number of employees, rates, and assets.
About Me and why I can help you with all of this
Howdy,
I am a long-time environmental practitioner with a varied, wide and interesting career in all aspects of environmental management. My background includes agriculture, cropping, pastoralist and grain work, many traditional environment projects of revegetation and biodiversity and in the last twenty years, extensive work in the urban environment.
In the water sector specifically, I worked on a water quality improvement plan, urban and rural water catchments, the River Murray, water-sensitive urban design and understanding how to use water where it falls to produce cool environments and increase biodiversity in the urban world.
Understanding these dynamics leads to finding more ways to mitigate and adapt to climate change and understanding how the urban ecosystem needs to work together to achieve the gains necessary for our future. For the Rural City of Murray Bridge I completed these projects and plans:
- Environment Management Plan
- Environment Risk Register
- Climate Emergency Action Plan
- incorporated climate change projections into all environmental planning
- A Construction Environment Management Plan
- Successfully bid for a $374 000 grant to replace all street lights with LEDs
- Moved 14 tonnes annually of nursing home food waste from landfill to FOGO, on the back of a successful grant application from Green Industries.
- Installed a recycling hub in the local library for small e-waste, spectacles and bottle caps
- Contributed data and knowledge to the Local Government Association’s early work on measuring Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions
- Worked on developing learning materials for executive and elected members on climate change knowledge
- Won the 2024 KESAB award for regional communities for a range of work improving environmental outcomes for Murray Bridge.
- Supported Rotary to recycle over 2 tonnes of blister packs
- initiated, researched and submitted many motions from Council to the Murray Darling Association AGM
- Represented the Rural City on many committees, projects and initiatives.
Contact information
Stephen Packer B. App. Sci. Natural Resource Management (Hons)
Phone: 0459249513
Email: stephen @cirrustosand.com.au
Address: Aldgate South Australia
