My local EPA can suck my balls.

The BBQ Pit
1

If it pleases the dope I wish to submit the Victorian Environmental Protection Authority for my virginal pitting.

The Story

Apparently Friday week ago my father-in-law and my missus went shopping at the local shopping strip. They parked the car and went shopping. On the return walk to the car the missus lit a cigarette. The FIL doesn’t smoke, is in poor health, and certainly does not allow smoking in his car. They stood on the opposite side of the street (under the awnings) to the car and waited for her to finish. She carries a small pocket ashtray she brought from the supermarket. She put her butt in when finished and they crossed the street, got in his car and took off.

Low and behold today the FIL called me quite upset. He has received a $577 infringement notice from the EPA:

“Offence : deposit burning litter
Offence Place : XXXX STREET
Information about the offence: female front passenger deposited lit butt on ground before getting into vehicle”

Also included is a print out of four sections of the act 45E 45G 45H and 45I.

Section 45E sets out that littering is an offence. Section 45G states

The notice came without a number to call, just a PO Box and their website address. I looked up and rang their switchboard and was told that all the information is on the website. After insisting a bit, I was told that it was probably filed through the recently released IPhone app by a member of the public. If they get a report they just send out an infringement notice.

I was shocked by this, people can just download the app and start reporting other people for allegedly littering? No evidence required except the plate and make and click “I promise I saw 'em heathens do it”? No training in the application of Acts and offenses, like the police and authorized officers? How do they know the difference between lit butt ($577) and unlit ($288) from their high horse? What is distance from the vehicle and “the place where he or she” sinfully killed mother nature? Two feet? Five blocks?

In fact you select in the app “female” “front passenger” “deposited lit butt” and “on ground before getting into vehicle” in the four drop down menus. No need to even be literate.

You want to know two more reasons why people unleash their inner judge/cop:
One

Two
If you can get to a milestone number of reports you can win gift packages.

Now I have to go through all the bullshit of organizing stat decs and potentially getting my unwell FIL through court. The busybody will probably not even turn up, to busy staking out the town’s cat that he thinks is shitting on a public nature strip. God knows how much time and money it will end up costing.

You might well ask how do I know she didn’t do it? She is fanatical about not dropping butts. As I said she carries a portable ashtray and I have never in all the time we have been together seen her do it.

Anyway, thanks for letting me rant a little. Anybody else had a littering fine before?

Oh and in the best spirits of pitting:

fuck them, fuck them all.

Rob

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Before anyone wades through this - this is not the EPA in the United States of America. This is an Australian State authority that has the role of regulating pollution.

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I hate people who litter, and when i see it happen i often wish there were something i could do about it, but that system in Victoria is fucked up.

They get an app report from a member of the public, and they send you a $577 notice, with no further evidence or anything? That is just bullshit. Yes, they provide a Statutory Declaration (similar, but not identical to, an affidavit) that you can fill out and mail in if you believe that you’ve been falsely accused, but the burden of proof seems to be on you to demonstrate that you did not, in fact, commit the offense. Relying on the word of the general public for something like this seems to me to be a recipe for all sorts of petty vendettas, or for every busybody to deputize himself or herself as a guardian of public morality.

I understand that we, as a society, give credence to certain statements made by individuals in authority. For example, if a cop writes you ticket for dangerous driving, the courts generally take the cop’s word for it, even though he may have no actual evidence except his own testimony. But to give that same level of credence to every member of the public, for information sent over a cellphone app, seems to me to be the height of absurdity.

I doubt this law could, or would, get passed in the United states, although i’ve been wrong about stuff like this before.

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You are assuming the notice actually requires him to pay. More likely it’s in the nature of a charging document (though admittedly I have no knowledge of this procedure.)

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Thanks, I did put in Victorian EPA. And I think the A in your EPA is for Agency.

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Yes it has all the regular payment details in the bottom third. BPay, Biller Code, Reference Number and a handy bar code. $577 due on the 9th of July.

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Little old ladies being wrongfully accused get great sympathy points. If this system has been really unpopular, go to the news.

Or get a group of people to get the app and start reporting local politicians for littering. Win those prizes!

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It has been in the local news before. There has also been reports I’m sure I’ve read of people getting multiple fines for a single alleged “offence”.

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Robrein, I’m sympathizing with you and your Father-in-Law, even though I detest litterers and especially smokers that are also litterers. But this is not a great way to fix the problem. I did think you meant Victorian as in the out of date mind set/time period sense rather than geographical reference.

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Well, you can see for yourself what the Victorian EPA says about these infringement notices. On the page titled “If you’ve been reported for littering,” it says:

It then provides a statutory declaration form, and notes that, if you submit this form, you need to provide:

Unfortunately, it doesn’t go into more detail than that. It doesn’t say, for example, what happens if you just ignore the notice. It doesn’t say how likely it is that a stat dec denying responsibility will be accepted. Also, even if your stat dec is accepted, the fact is that filling out and mailing such a form takes time, effort, and money.

It’s worth noting that Victoria isn’t the only state with such a system. New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, similarly allows people to report littering, and will issue infringement notices based on such reports if the reports are detailed enough. The NSW site, on its FAQ page, says:

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That’s how I read it too and was confused. I must have skimmed over Authority and just parsed it as Agency- thanks for the clarification up thread!

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Hey, in fairness Pennsylvanian and Mississippian are time periods too.

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And Devonian…

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And Georgian…

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Welcome to the US. It’s where the flavor is, and where particular people congregate. Road trips are enjoyable, not a cough in a carload. We’d rather fight than emigrate.

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I got pinged twice (in separate incidents) for throwing a lit cigarette out of the car window while driving. Both were along the same stretch of road at the same time in the morning as part of my morning drive to work. I don’t do this, by the way, I use the car ashtray.

Both times I challenged the infringement notice with a statutory declaration signed in front of the pharmacist on the ground floor of the building I worked in. i.e. Minimal effort and time to get the stat dec.

Both times I claimed (probably accurately as I didn’t know what the other driver saw) that what they saw was the disposal of ASH out the car window, NOT the butt. The disposal of ASH out of the car window is acceptable, so I got off both times with the EPA withdrawing the infringement notice both times.

I accept that disposing of butts out of the car window is not acceptable, but as I didn’t do it, I’m not going to pay for what Mr Busybody in the car behind me thought he saw.

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Pharmacist? Do pharmacists in Australia serve notarial functions? Why?

(Although I admit it would be convenient to just be able to run down to the local CVS if you needed something notarized)

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Yep. Notary-type functions can, in Australia, be performed by quite a wide variety of professionals. Here’s a list of people who can witness a statutory declaration in Victoria. It’s similar in most Australian states:

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I’ve already said that i think the way the law works is bad, but having spent many years living in both the United States and Australia, i would like to note one important thing that the two countries seem to have in common:

In both places, discarded cigarette butts constitute a significant portion of the everyday litter problem, and in both places discarded cigarette butts have caused a significant number of fires, and yet, in each country, every single smoker swears black and blue that THEY always dispose of their butts properly.

Here in San Diego County, they banned smoking on the beaches, not because of the health risks of smoke, but because you couldn’t go to the beach without turning up little gold mines of cigarette butts that some prior beachgoer had thoughtfully left in the sand. When the law was passed, county smokers waxed indignant in the local media about how THEY never left their cigarette butts on the beach.

Smokers themselves, to hear them talk about it, are never the cause of cigarette-related litter. There must be a trans-Pacific, cigarette butt-distributing fairy that goes around raiding ashtrays in order to sprinkle the offending articles throughout the Australian and American countrysides.

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Well, sure. They don’t like to talk about it, but aside from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Facility going tits-up after the Japanese tsunami, the next most devastating consequence was the Fukushima Prefecture Official Cigarette Butt Dump was completely washed away, and the ocean currents have been depositing the detritus on American beaches ever since.

We’re talking about a cone of filter tips, here, three storeys tall; I kid you not.

Well, maybe I kid you a little…