8. Clauses 13 and 14 introduce amendments that clarify the distinction between an "incident" as referred to in section 30 of the Act; and an "emergency situation" which will be regulated in terms of a new section 30A. While section 30 deals with the reporting and remediation duties of a person responsible for the sudden, unexpected and uncontrolled release of a hazardous substance; a new section 30A seeks to address a situation where a listed or specified activity is about to commence in response to an "emergency situation", where the time-frames do not allow for normal environmental assessments or applications for environmental authorisations. An example of the latter "emergency situation" is the commencement of flood defence activities by a local authority in response to sudden and inclement weather conditions. In these types of emergencies/disaster situations, the urgent response times would not permit the conducting of the normal environmental assessment and authorization process, but would now be subject to written or verbal directives by the competent authority. The definition of an "emergency situation" is now aligned to a "disaster" as defined in the Disaster Management Act, 2002 (Act No. 57 of 2002). 9. Clause 20 inserts a new subsection 2 in section 34H to serve as a reminder to the authorities that the High Court is not bound by the limitation in relation to penalties set by this Act and that in cases where the competent authority is of the view that more severe penalties are warranted, it can approach the National Prosecuting Authority to institute criminal proceedings in the High Court.