Key Points:
Sites which previously did not trigger the duty to
report under the Contaminated Land Management Act could do so under
new draft Guidelines on the Duty to Report
Contamination.
Contamination reporting requirements in NSW are about to change,
as the EPA has issued new draft
Guidelines on the Duty to Report Contamination under the
Contaminated Land Management Act 1997 (NSW) (CLM
Act).
The Draft Guidelines adopt the national contamination assessment
standards which were updated significantly in 2013 and have been
used widely since then, but the statutory force of the Guidelines
will give those standards new impetus.
Given the CLM Act's broad triggers for the duty to report
contamination, and changes to some of the reporting standards in
the Draft Guidelines, land owners and occupiers of potentially or
actually contaminated sites may want to review their position on
whether contamination on those sites should be reported.
