How to report an erosion or sediment incident

You must report an incident that causes or threatens to cause material harm to human health or the environment.

You must also report incidents that breach your business’s EPA licence conditions.

How to respond to an erosion and sediment complaint

If there is an erosion and sediment complaint about your business, respond by: 

• identifying the source 
• fixing the cause of the erosion and sedimentation 
• keeping people who made the complaint informed, where you can.

Check and update your controls

The general environmental duty applies to all Victorians. It requires you to eliminate or reduce the risks of harm to human health and the environment. This applies as far as reasonably practicable. 

As part of this duty, make sure the controls you put in place to eliminate or reduce risks are effective and working as planned. Following a risk management process can help you do this. 

Controls may fail due to lack of maintenance, poor implementation, or changing site conditions. If your controls are not effective or working as planned, you will need to understand the reason why and take action. This could include reviewing when and how often you maintain the control , upgrading to a different control or considering additional controls.  

Find out how to control erosion and sediment from your business. 

To make sure your management of risk is ongoing, you should continually repeat the four-step risk management process. 

Useful tips 

Keeping a log of erosion and sediment complaint details can help you identify the cause and improve your controls. Your log could include: 

• complainant details (i.e. name, address, contact numbers) 
• wind direction 
• if it was raining 
• time of day 
• what activities you were carrying out 
• water quality monitoring data 
• what you have done to fix the problem.

Read more about erosion and sediment

Erosion and sediment: advice for businesses

Control erosion and sediment

Work-based erosion and sediment examples

Managing soil disturbance (publication 1894)

Erosion, sediment and dust treatment train (publication 1893)

Managing stockpiles (publication 1895)

Managing truck and other vehicle movement (publication 1897)

Managing how you work within or adjacent to waterways (publication 1896)