Right and below: The former landfill site in Five Mile Road Nar Nar Goon has made a recent EPA priorityA FORMER industrial land site in Nar Nar Goon has made the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) hit list.
In an EPA registry release, the former landfill site in Five Mile Road was identified as a “priority site” in need of ongoing monitoring.
The location was one of about 150 sites identified throughout metropolitan and regional Victoria by the EPA.
Most of the identified areas were former industrial land sites such as petrol stations, landfill sites and factories.
These sites may contain harmful levels of petrol, lead, cyanide, arsenic or other hazardous chemicals and Dennis Monahan, EPA Victoria executive director environmental sciences said the EPA frequently discovered contaminated land.
“Land contamination is a legacy of historic land use when environmental controls and knowledge were not what they are today.
“Land contaminated by former waste disposal, industrial and similar activities such as service stations is frequently discovered during changes to land use for example, from industrial to residential use.
“In most cases these can be managed at the time that the change of land use occurs, through the environmental audit system,” he said.
Mr Monahan said sites became “priority sites” when EPA clean up notices were issued but properties were removed from the listing once the clean up had been completed.
He said the registry was designed to protect potential buyers from purchasing land with contamination problems.
“The priority sites list is not a list of all contaminated sites in Victoria, nor is it generally available as a list as such.
“But rather as a system that allows searches to be conducted on specific sites during land conveyancing process to ensure buyers are aware of any legal obligations for a clean up,” he said.
