The WA EPA has launched five projects to test the organisation's overall effectiveness and determine whether companies and other agencies are acting on its advice, says its chair Paul Vogel.
If new WA EPA recommendations are adopted, industry buffer zones in the Perth-Peel region will be set and enforced more rigorously, and biodiversity offsets won't just be judged on what they achieve for individual species.
Environment ministers have agreed to strengthen controls on particle pollution, speed up work on a national clean air agreement and establish a national standard for the environmental management of chemicals.
Western Australia's Environment Minister Albert Jacob has directed the EPA to reassess two iron ore mines that the agency had deemed too environmentally risky.