Safe Drinking Water Act 2003

This section applies if the Secretary is satisfied that a water supplier or a water storage manager—

is contravening this Act or the regulations; or

has contravened this Act or the regulations in circumstances that make it likely that the contravention will occur again; or

is likely to contravene this Act or the regulations.

The Secretary may accept a written undertaking by the supplier or manager to take specified action within a specified period or periods, or to refrain from taking specified action—

to stop the contravention from continuing or occurring again; and

to eliminate or minimise the consequences of the contravention.

The Secretary may only accept an undertaking if it—

identifies the act, or failure to act, that constitutes, or that constituted or that will constitute, the contravention; and

states the period during which the undertaking applies; and

is otherwise in a form, and contains the details, specified or approved by the Secretary.

An undertaking may deal with more than one contravention of this Act or the regulations, regardless of whether or not the contraventions are of the same nature.

A water supplier or a water storage manager may not be prosecuted in relation to an act, or a failure to act, that is the subject of—

a completed undertaking; or

a current undertaking, unless the supplier or manager is in breach of the undertaking.

Subsection (5) applies even if the thing that a water supplier or a water storage manager agreed to do, or to not do, in an undertaking will not result in it fully meeting all the relevant obligations imposed under this Act or the regulations on it in respect of the contravention that is the subject of the undertaking.

Despite anything to the contrary in this section, the Secretary may not accept an undertaking in relation to a contravention of section 34.