EPA Victoria Revokes Barro Group Sunshine Landfill Licence
On 27 July 2023, EPA Victoria permanently revoked the operating licence of Barro Group for the Sunshine Landfill located in Kealba, a residential suburb in Melbourne’s west. The decision brings a definitive end to waste acceptance at the facility and marks the conclusion of a protracted and deeply contentious regulatory enforcement process that began in earnest in December 2022, when EPA Victoria issued a formal Notice of Intention to Suspend the licence. Barro Group did not contest the notice and conceded its right to continue operations, leaving EPA Victoria with no alternative but to cancel the licence permanently. The site will never again accept waste.
The revocation is the culmination of more than six years of community harm. Since November 2019, the Sunshine Landfill has been the source of severe subsurface hotspot fires caused by oxygen infiltrating the landfill cells and igniting decomposing organic waste. Residents in Kealba and surrounding suburbs have been subjected to continuous toxic smoke plumes and offensive chemical odours over that period, with documented impacts on community health and amenity. The situation attracted sustained media coverage, community advocacy, and mounting political pressure on both the operator and the regulator to act decisively.
For environmental professionals, waste facility operators, property developers, and their legal advisers, this decision carries weight well beyond the immediate site. It establishes a clear enforcement precedent: EPA Victoria is prepared to permanently shut down major waste infrastructure assets where an operator cannot demonstrate the systems and capacity to manage subsurface hazards safely. Critically, the revocation does not extinguish the operator’s legal obligations. EPA Victoria has issued new environmental notices under the Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic) that legally bind Barro Group to fund and execute the full remediation of the site, a programme expected to extend for at least five years.
Key details of the Sunshine Landfill Kealba enforcement action
The subsurface hotspot fires at the Sunshine Landfill were not a single isolated event but a persistent and escalating engineering failure. The fires, which began in November 2019, were caused by oxygen infiltrating the sealed landfill cells and reacting with decomposing waste material. Investigations into the failure mechanisms identified multiple critical design and operational deficiencies. These included exposed external sidewalls that lacked adequate low-permeability cover, clay liner bund exposure within the leachate drainage layer, and leachate sump risers that had been surrounded by gravel rather than low-permeability soil backfill. Each of these conditions created pathways for atmospheric oxygen to enter the waste mass, sustaining long-term subsurface combustion that proved extraordinarily difficult to extinguish.
The regulatory enforcement pathway leading to licence revocation was initiated formally in December 2022, when EPA Victoria issued a Notice of Intention to Suspend the operating licence. Under the Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic), this notice gave Barro Group a formal opportunity to respond and demonstrate that it had the operational systems and capacity to manage the ongoing risks to the surrounding community. Barro Group did not respond to the notice and did not contest it, effectively conceding that it could not meet the regulator’s requirements. This non-response left EPA Victoria with a clear legislative basis to proceed to permanent revocation of the licence on 27 July 2023.
The Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic) is the primary legislative instrument governing this action. The Act introduced the General Environmental Duty (GED), a proactive, duty-based obligation requiring persons conducting activities that pose risks to human health or the environment to understand those risks and take reasonably practicable steps to minimise them. The enforcement action against Barro Group demonstrates how EPA Victoria applies the GED in practice: where an operator cannot demonstrate adequate risk management systems, the regulator can and will escalate to the most severe available enforcement tool, including permanent licence cancellation. The Act also provides EPA Victoria with the power to issue environmental action notices that survive the cancellation of an operating licence, ensuring that duty holders cannot use regulatory outcomes as a mechanism to escape long-term remediation obligations.
Despite the revocation of the operating licence, Barro Group remains the legally and financially responsible party for the complete remediation of the Sunshine Landfill. EPA Victoria has issued a new environmental notice specifically to ensure that this liability is enforceable and cannot be avoided. The final remaining hotspot within the landfill is expected to take at least five years to fully extinguish and remediate. The total financial cost of the multi-year remediation programme has not been publicly specified, but given the scale of the engineering works required to address oxygen ingress pathways, cap exposed cells, remediate affected leachate infrastructure, and manage landfill gas over an extended post-closure period, the programme is expected to represent a substantial multi-million-dollar liability for the operator.
Australian context: how this decision intersects with national and state contaminated land frameworks
The Sunshine Landfill revocation is the most significant landfill enforcement action taken by an Australian state EPA in recent memory, and its implications extend beyond Victoria. Across Australia, landfill facilities and closed legacy waste sites are regulated under a patchwork of state-based frameworks, each with its own licensing and enforcement powers. In New South Wales, operating approvals for waste facilities are administered under the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (NSW), with the EPA NSW holding equivalent powers to suspend or revoke approvals where operators fail to manage environmental risks. Similar frameworks exist in Queensland under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld) and in South Australia under the Environment Protection Act 1993 (SA). The Barro Group decision signals to operators and regulators across all jurisdictions that subsurface landfill hazards are not a matter that can be managed through incremental compliance responses alone — where systemic failure is evident, permanent closure and enforceable post-closure liability are live regulatory outcomes.
References and related sources
- Primary source: www.epa.vic.gov.au
- epa.vic.gov.au
- rightnow.org.au
- epa.vic.gov.au
- epa.vic.gov.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: 28 Jul 2026
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