Square B2 · The land · NSW EPA and EPA Victoria
Contaminated land: the registers and the seller’s duties
NSW and Victoria each publish registers of contaminated sites: in NSW, the EPA’s monthly list of notified sites and its record of notices; in Victoria, EPA Victoria’s Priority Sites Register, which is also shown on the Victoria Unearthed map. Neither is a list of every contaminated site, and in Victoria a landowner who sells has a duty to disclose known contamination to the buyer.
General information, not legal or environmental advice. Contamination law is each state’s own; this sheet covers only NSW and Victoria, from each state’s EPA, and those agencies are the place to check. Tax questions on a sale are the ATO’s.
The three registers, side by side
| Register | What puts a site on it | What it does not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| NSW EPA list of notified sites | Land notified to the EPA as potentially contaminated; the list says whether each site is regulated under the Contaminated Land Management Act 1997. | That a listed site is contaminated enough to regulate, or that an unlisted site is clean. |
| NSW EPA record of notices | Notices and orders issued when land is declared significantly contaminated, when that ends, and when a notice is revoked. | Section 60 notifications, or restrictions and covenants the EPA has attached to a title. |
| EPA Victoria Priority Sites Register | A current clean-up notice, pollution abatement notice, environmental action notice or other notice to manage contamination. | Every contaminated site, or every site EPA Victoria knows of; a site leaves the register once it has complied with its notices. |
New South Wales
The list, the record and the duty to report
The NSW EPA publishes its list of notified sites each month, as a PDF and a spreadsheet; when this sheet was checked, the list on its page was dated 14 July 2026. The EPA gives two reasons land appears on it:
- the owner or the polluter notified the EPA under section 60 of the Contaminated Land Management Act 1997; or
- the EPA learned of it another way and is satisfied the site is or was contaminated.
The EPA says plainly that being listed does not always mean the contamination is significant enough to regulate, and that a site missing from the list is not necessarily uncontaminated: the list holds only sites it knows about. To a possible buyer of a listed site, its advice is to ask the seller about the contamination, and perhaps get contamination or legal advice of their own. It calls contamination from past uses common, mostly in urban areas, and says a site that is properly remediated or managed may not affect the use planned for it.
The record of notices
The record of notices is a searchable database. The EPA lists what it holds:
- orders made under Part 3 of the Act;
- notices made public under section 58;
- approved voluntary management proposals not yet fully carried out, whose approval has not been revoked;
- site audit statements given to the EPA under section 53B that relate to significantly contaminated land;
- where practicable, copies of anything that formerly had to be on the public record;
- actions under sections 35 or 36 of the Environmentally Hazardous Chemicals Act 1985, by the EPA or the former State Pollution Control Commission.
Two things are outside it. Section 60 notifications are not on the record. And where the EPA has imposed a restriction on use, or a public positive covenant, under section 88E of the Conveyancing Act 1919 on land that was under a management order or an approved proposal, that is attached to the land’s title instead.
Reporting contamination
The EPA says landowners and anyone responsible for contaminating land must report the contamination to it, under section 60 of the Act, and its guidelines on the duty to report explain when contamination should be reported. For more information or advice it gives the Environment Line, 131 555.
Victoria
Duties that come with owning the land
EPA Victoria says that anyone who owns or is selling land in Victoria has duties under Victoria’s Environment Protection Act 2017 to manage the risks of contamination and to disclose them, even where someone else caused it. A seller has to disclose known contamination to the people buying the land and to anyone who may become its manager.
The two duties, by section
Duty to manage, section 39. Anyone who manages or controls contaminated land, owners included, must minimise the risks of harm to health and the environment from it, so far as reasonably practicable. That includes sharing information about it with anyone they reasonably believe may be affected, and giving anyone they reasonably expect to manage or control the land the information they need to meet the same duty, including whether EPA Victoria has been notified.
Duty to notify, section 40. Anyone who manages or controls land with prescribed notifiable contamination, groundwater included, must notify EPA Victoria as soon as practicable once they become aware of it, or reasonably should be. If there is an imminent risk of harm, EPA Victoria says you must call its 24-hour pollution hotline on 1300 372 842.
Where a landowner suspects contamination, EPA Victoria recommends a preliminary site investigation: a desktop assessment, which an environmental consultant can do, of whether the land’s history makes contamination possible.
Where EPA Victoria suggests looking
For researching a site’s past, its page names these resources, in this order:
- Victoria Unearthed, a map drawing on environmental audits, groundwater contamination maps, the Victorian landfill register’s historical landfill data, historical business listings, Check Your Groundwater areas, the Groundwater Quality Restricted Use Zone and the Priority Sites Register;
- the local council, which may hold information about contaminated land nearby;
- Landata, whose aerial photographs can show land use changing over decades;
- VicPlan, the statewide map of planning scheme information.
The Priority Sites Register itself has been kept by EPA Victoria and open to the public since 1998, and is updated monthly; its own page cautions that the information may not be accurate, current or complete.