By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
NEW-home buyers in Lynbrook Greens housing estate have been billed for unsightly piles of industrial waste being illegally dumped on their vacant properties.
Environment Protection Authority Victoria regional manager Leigh Bryant said the home-buyers in Banjo Circuit were innocent victims of “brazen” acts – even before a brick had been laid on their house-and-land packages.
Such illegal dumping was being orchestrated by an “organised-crime network” of clear-fill, soil and waste disposal businesses – though most in those industries were “doing the right thing”, he said.
“They are in competition with other people in the industry, but they tell each other of new, empty places to dump.”
Evidently, these places include near-deserted, semi-developed housing estates like Lynbrook Greens.
The aim is profiteering: simply to avoid landfill fees – about $200 for a skip of industrial waste – at a waste transfer station or landfill, Mr Bryant said.
Instead that fee – as well as clean-up and pick-up costs of up to $1000 – are being passed on to the landholder.
Mr Bryant said the dozen ugly mounds of bricks, tiles, boards and tyres at the four vacant lots had been clearly dumped from a rubbish skip.
The EPA’s illegal dumping strike force team have since covertly surveiled the area; one of among 80 operations in Victoria using techniques such as black ops surveillance cameras and soil testing guns.
“We’re watching. We’re now aware of this site,” Mr Bryant said.
Matthew Robins, a Victorian House and Land Specialists real estate agent selling in Lynbrook Greens, said dumping was a “part of life” at housing estates in the south-east.
“Sometimes the developers will clean it up, but unfortunately with this case, the developer is not there anymore. He’s gone.
“[Illegal dumping] is impossible to police. There are times I’ve seen trucks drive down and then see me and turn around. What can you do?
“It’s unfortunately a part of life before you start building.”
Since 2010, the EPA’s strike team has slapped down 13 prosecutions – and 177 penalty notices – against individuals and companies for illegally dumping materials such as contaminated fill material, asbestos, tyres, and manufacturing, construction and demolition waste.
Maximum penalties for companies are more than $1.2 million; individuals face up to seven years jail or a fine of up to $610,700.
To report illegal dumping, ring 1300 372 842.
