Below is a summary of the Chapters in my Environmental Planning book.

Chapter 1 - Defining environmental planning and sustainability

1.1 Introduction

This chapter is a largely theoretical discussion of the ideas around the question: what is environmental planning? It will cover the meaning of both terms, will set environmental planning within the broader context of environmental protection. A distinction will be drawn between environmental planning and sustainability planning.

1.2 Planning

There are three keys words that need to be defined, or at least have their meaning refined: environment, sustainability and planning. I’ll start with ‘planning’.

‘Planning’ for the purposes of this book is land use planning. As Thompson and Maginn (2012) note, planning is about making decisions which facilitate future actions. It is mostly seen as applying to cities, to allow for the orderly development of residential areas, employment centres, supporting infrastructure and services. These future actions can either be long-term plan making, in some cases up to 50 years, more short-term decision making like zoning, or more immediate decision making like development approval (for example approval to construct a house).

Planning can be legally binding, that is, statutory, where decision making specifically allows or dis-allows certain land uses……

Chapter 2 - Geomorphology of the Swan Coastal Plain

2.1 Introduction

This introduction is not meant to be a comprehensive description of the geology or geomorphology of the Australian continent. The intention is to give some very basic information that provides a framework upon which the geomorphology of the Swan Coastal Plain (SCP) can be understood. The key references for this Chapter are Bolland (1998), Department of Minerals and Petroleum Resources (Undated) and Seddon (1972).

I have chosen to only focus on the SCP for two reasons: first, most of WA’s population lives on the SCP; and, second, I grew up and spent most of my life living on the SCP. I spent all my school and early Uni days in Medina. Medina was probably the first ‘master planned’ community in WA, as it was set up in the 1950s to house up to 25,000 workers for the new heavy industrial area in Kwinana. Four suburbs were planned, with Medina and Calista built first. Medina is an interesting place because it was built on the Garden City idea by WA’s first female town planner, Margaret Feilman, with wide street and many and large open spaces. According to the Margaret Feilman Foundation website (https://feilmanfoundation.com.au/margaret-feilman-obituary/) the reason why the Garden City idea as chosen was because:

… if 25,000 workers and their families were eventually going to live in what was virgin scrub south of Perth, it was their welfare, she proposed, that was the prime consideration.

She also ensured that this new settlement would be located well away from the industrial area. Margaret was also an active conservationist, which may explain why most of the open spaces were left as bushland. Below is a recent Google Earth photo of Medina and the large area of open space and bushland are obvious if somewhat parkland cleared now.

My point is that we grew up surrounded by bush, and bush was our playground. In this way I’m connected to the SCP. Anyhow, on with the main part of this chapter.

Chapter 3 – Biodiversity

3.1 Introduction

This chapter covers the broad topic of biodiversity with an emphasis on the value of protecting biodiversity, and the policy of and planning for its protection. This will include the regulatory process for clearing native vegetation in WA. There will be a detailed description of how the native vegetation on the Swan Coastal Plain is described and categorised. The chapter will finish with a discussion of the contentious topic of biodiversity offsets. Biodiversity is the ‘green’ component of the environment referred to in Chapter 1.

Chapter 4 – Water Resources 1: Overview, groundwater, surface water and wetlands

4.1 Introduction

This is the first of three chapters covering the broad topic of water resources, which is the ‘blue’ component of the environment referred to in Chapter 1. This chapter covers the significance of water, describes the various types of water resources with a particular focus on groundwater, covers wetlands and their significance, and finishes with a discussion of the broad water management and planning issues. Chapter 5 covers surface water in more detail and the special issues of urban water management including flood management and urban stormwater management. Chapter 6 covers the coast and near-shore marine environment.

Chapter 5: Surface water and stormwater

5.1 Introduction

This chapter follows on from the previous chapter and focuses on surface water especially managing the impacts of run-off during and after rain events in built environments. This run-off is called ‘stormwater’. In a natural environment, stormwater either infiltrates through the soil and forms underground aquifers, or flows as surface run-off in watercourses – rivers, stream and creeks. This water eventually ends up either in the ocean or in inland wetlands.

When we build our towns and cities, we create large areas of hard stand (roads, parking areas, roofs etc.) which prevent any infiltration: as a result, the amount of water that ended up as surface run-off increases significantly. New and artificial drainage patterns are required to careful manage this run-off to avoid flooding of houses, parks etc. – see Plates 5.1. and 5.2. As well, the remaining natural drainage system can become severely altered either leading to greater volumes of water entering this system, or less water. These changes can lead to increased flooding of the surrounding land (where greater volumes of water flow), or cause significant impacts on the natural ecosystems that the natural drainage system supports (both when greater and less volumes of water flow).

Chapter 6: The Coast - coastal processes, coastal planning and coastal management

6.1 Introduction

This chapter covers the third part of the blue element of the environment. It discusses the value and importance of the coast, the coast will be defined, and the main coastal processes are explained. The chapter finishes with a detailed discussion of the policy and framework for coastal planning especially in response to the impacts of climate change, including the history of planning and policy making for the coast.

6.2 Value of the coast

The coastal zone has a special place in the lives of Australians. Most Australians want to live there and if they can’t they want to take their holidays there. It contains diverse ecosystems and a high proportion of Australia’s industrial activity occurs in the zone. It is a priceless national asset.

These are the introductory words of a report to the Commonwealth Government into the importance of the coastal zone written over 30 years ago (Resources Assessment Commision 1993, 7)……

Chapter 7 – Brown issues

7.1 Introduction

As noted in Chapter 1, one way to look at the environment is to recognise it as being made up of three components: green, blue and brown. This chapter deals with brown issues, which involves protecting humans and the environment from the impacts of certain human activities that cause negative impacts, especially air pollution (Plate 7.1), water pollution, excessive noise, exposure to toxic chemicals, and risks and hazards from industrial activities (for example explosions).

For the most part, the items that are causing the impacts are found naturally in nature, for example sulphur dioxide, but human activities lead to an increase in their levels. As well, human activity creates new substances which can have negative impacts, for example certain pesticides. 

Low levels of most of these substances will normally have no noticeable impacts either on humans or the environment. In many cases, the level of these substances can have positive impacts as the natural environment has adapted to their presence – for example, nitrogen in the form of nitrate is essential for aquatic plant growth, but high levels of nitrate cause excessive growth of algae which has negative impacts on other aquatic species….

Chapter 8 – Climate change

8.1. The basics of the greenhouse effect and global heating (warming)

This chapter provides essential scientific information about the greenhouse effect as the basis for understanding global heating/warming and climate change. It also covers the policy and planning framework for addressing climate change.

Global warming (heating) is the gradual warming of the planet due to the increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This heating will cause changes to our climate (e.g. decreasing rainfall in some regions) as well as other changes (e.g. rising sea levels) – these impacts are commonly grouped together as climate change.

Chapter 9 – Environmental assessment and approvals

9.1. Introduction

In highly developed democracies it is now common for new developments and changes to land uses will not only require planning approval, but will require other approvals. For example, intensive agriculture will normally require planning approval to ensure it is located well away from sensitive land uses, but will also require a licence from DWER to abstract water for irrigation. Noisy industries will require approval under Part V of the Environmental Protection Act 1986 (EP Act) to ensure noise levels at nearby residential areas are acceptable, and houses that back onto the Swan or Canning Rivers will need approval from the Swan River Trust to construct a jetty.

Most countries have separate processes in place to allow major projects to have their environmental impacts assessed. In many cases, this will also lead to a separate environmental approval. This process is called environmental impact assessment or EIA.

Chapter 10 – Uncertainty and risk

10.1 Introduction

This chapter will cover the two broad and related topics of uncertainty and risk. Before I dive into these issues and how they are dealt with in environmental planning, I want to set some context.

There has been a bit of a theme in some of the chapters related to the ideas of human values and subjectivity and how this is part of environmental planning – for example setting standards for air quality. So, I want to explore this a bit more as is plays into both uncertainty and risk. I will do this using some case studies.

Chapter 11 – Decision making in environmental planning

In this chapter I will discuss the complexities of decision making in environmental planning. I hope that the case studies I have used and some of the discussions in this book have shown that decision making is often not simple. It helps to have policies that support decision making, but these instruments have, by their nature, a level of flexibility built into them, which means that case by case decision making is needed. As well, some decision making is made in the absence of good policy and with information that is contested.