EPA Victoria permanently revokes Barro Group’s Kealba landfill operating licence, mandating five-year remediation program.

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Overview

On 27 July 2026, EPA Victoria permanently revoked the operating licence of Barro Group for the Sunshine Landfill at Kealba, bringing a definitive end to all landfilling operations at the site. The decision marks the culmination of a multi-year regulatory battle that began in earnest when underground thermal hotspots first emerged at the site in 2019, triggering persistent odour and smoke events that have severely impacted surrounding residential communities in Melbourne’s western suburbs. In December 2025, EPA Victoria issued a notice of intent to suspend the licence, and Barro Group ultimately conceded its right to continue operations rather than contest the suspension, clearing the path for permanent revocation.

What makes this decision particularly significant for environmental professionals, industrial operators, and their legal advisers is what came alongside the revocation. EPA Victoria simultaneously issued a new environmental notice under the Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic) legally binding the operator to extinguish the remaining subsurface hotspot and fully remediate the site. The regulator has stated publicly that this extinguishment and remediation process is expected to take at least five years, emphasising the scale and technical complexity of what lies ahead for Barro Group at Kealba.

For developers, waste facility operators, and land transaction practitioners across Australia, the Kealba decision is a landmark enforcement precedent. It demonstrates unambiguously that permanent licence revocation does not transfer, dilute, or extinguish the operator’s environmental liabilities. The regulatory framework simply pivots from operational compliance to post-closure enforcement, and the financial and legal obligations remain squarely with the original duty holder. This distinction has profound implications for how contaminated land risk is assessed, disclosed, and managed at any facility carrying long-term environmental liabilities.

Key details of the Kealba landfill revocation and remediation requirements

The Sunshine Landfill at Kealba has been an active waste disposal site operated by Barro Group in Melbourne’s western suburbs within the City of Brimbank. Underground thermal hotspots, which are essentially subsurface smouldering combustion events within the buried waste mass, were first recorded at the site in 2019. These hotspots produce landfill gas compositions and thermal gradients that are extremely difficult to extinguish using conventional means, and they represent an ongoing source of volatile organic compound emissions, combustion by-products, and odour impacts to adjacent residential land. The community has lived with chronic odour and periodic smoke events for over six years, a timeframe that itself speaks to the intractability of deep-seated landfill fires.

The formal revocation followed EPA Victoria’s December 2025 notice of intent to suspend the operating licence. Barro Group’s decision not to contest the suspension converted the suspension pathway into a permanent revocation on 27 July 2026. The legal vehicle for continued post-closure obligations is the environmental notice issued concurrently under the Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic). This Act, which came into full effect in July 2021 and replaced the Environment Protection Act 1970 (Vic), introduced a restructured enforcement framework that includes Environmental Action Notices and other binding instruments specifically designed to capture post-closure and remediation obligations. The mechanism ensures that the corporate entity responsible for the facility cannot dissolve its liabilities simply by surrendering its licence.

The General Environmental Duty (GED), codified at Section 25 of the Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic), is the foundational provision underpinning this enforcement action. The GED requires all persons conducting activities in Victoria that pose a risk of harm to human health or the environment to understand those risks and take reasonably practicable steps to minimise them. EPA Victoria’s enforcement position in this case signals clearly that the regulator views the GED as a continuous, non-negotiable obligation, one that persists through changes in operational status and licence tenure. Barro Group directors have previously faced charges relating to GED breaches, as reported by industry publication Inside Waste, further indicating the personal liability dimension that principals of waste facility operators must now treat as a genuine legal exposure.

The five-year remediation timeline projected by EPA Victoria reflects the genuine technical difficulty of managing deep-seated landfill fires. Extinguishing subsurface thermal hotspots in a capped or partially capped waste mass requires a combination of advanced thermal imaging and monitoring to map the hotspot extent and temperature gradients, active landfill gas extraction to deprive smouldering zones of oxygen and remove combustible gases, engineered capping modifications to limit oxygen ingress while managing gas pressure differentials, and potentially injection of inert gases or recirculated leachate to suppress combustion. Simultaneously, groundwater monitoring must continue to detect any mobilisation of leachate-borne contaminants driven by elevated temperatures, and ambient air quality monitoring in surrounding residential areas must be maintained throughout. EPA Victoria’s Landfill Best Practice Environmental Management guidelines, Publication 788.3, provide the technical framework against which remediation planning at the site will be benchmarked.

Australian context: GED enforcement, post-closure liability, and landfill regulation across jurisdictions

The Kealba decision arrives at a moment when landfill regulation across Australian jurisdictions is tightening considerably. Victoria’s Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic) has positioned the state at the forefront of post-closure liability enforcement, but comparable duty-of-care and post-closure obligations exist in varying forms across other jurisdictions, and the Kealba outcome is likely to inform regulatory thinking nationally.

References and related sources

• Primary source: www.epa.vic.gov.au
• brimbank.vic.gov.au
• brimbank.vic.gov.au
• epa.vic.gov.au
• insidewaste.com.au
• EPA Victoria

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This is an iEnvi Machete news summary. Prepared by iEnvi to summarise the source article for contaminated land, groundwater, remediation, approvals and site risk professionals.

Published: 30 Jul 2026

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