EPA Victoria secures record $60k fine and clean-up order against individual for illegal asbestos dumping

Overview

On 21 July 2023, the Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court handed down what is believed to be the highest fine ever imposed on an individual under Victoria’s Environment Protection Act 2017. Landowner Joseph Chetcuti was fined $60,000 and ordered to pay $12,000 in legal costs after pleading guilty to operating an unlicensed waste facility on his 19,000 square metre semi-rural property on Black Gully Road, Diamond Creek. The court also issued a mandatory clean-up order requiring full remediation of the site, with costs estimated to exceed $1 million. Critically, that remediation obligation remains legally binding on Chetcuti even if the land is sold.

The site had been accepting construction and demolition waste, as well as soil contaminated with asbestos, from truck operators seeking to avoid commercial landfill disposal fees. The matter first came to the attention of EPA Victoria and emergency services in 2021, when an active and illegal burn-off of industrial waste was detected on the property. Subsequent soil testing confirmed asbestos contamination. Chetcuti was prosecuted after failing to comply with an Environmental Action Notice (EAN) issued by EPA Victoria directing him to cease accepting waste, properly classify the stockpiled material, and obtain verification of asbestos removal from a qualified occupational hygienist.

For environmental consultants, auditors, site investigators, transaction lawyers, and land developers operating across Australia, this ruling is far more than a Victorian enforcement story. It crystallises a shift in regulatory posture that has been building since the commencement of the Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic): individual landowners and directors are now directly and personally in the frame for environmental crimes, and contamination liability does not evaporate at the point of property transfer. The implications reach across site assessment practice, transaction due diligence, and waste management obligations in every jurisdiction that has moved toward general environmental duty and personal liability frameworks.

Key details of the Diamond Creek prosecution

The prosecution centred on two distinct statutory offences under the Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic). The first was non-compliance with an Environmental Action Notice under Section 290(1) of the Act. EPA Victoria had issued the EAN requiring Chetcuti to stop accepting waste at the property, undertake formal classification of the accumulated material, and procure sign-off from a qualified occupational hygienist confirming that asbestos had been properly identified and removed. Chetcuti’s failure to comply with that notice was a standalone criminal offence, separate from the underlying waste dumping activity itself. The second charge, under Section 115, related to the unlawful deposit and burning of industrial waste on an unlicensed site.

The property at Diamond Creek spans approximately 19,000 square metres, which is roughly 1.9 hectares of semi-rural land in Melbourne’s outer north-eastern fringe. The scale of waste accumulation at the site was substantial enough to attract EPA investigation and emergency services attendance during the burn-off events that began in 2021. Soil testing conducted by EPA Victoria subsequently confirmed the presence of asbestos within the imported fill material. Asbestos in soil triggers specific investigation and risk assessment obligations under the National Environment Protection (Assessment of Site Contamination) Measure 2013 (NEPM 2013), including the requirement for bonded and friable asbestos to be identified separately, quantified, and assessed against health investigation levels for both commercial and residential land use scenarios.

The financial penalty of $60,000, combined with $12,000 in legal costs, represents the monetary component of the sentence. However, the more consequential element of the court’s order is the mandatory remediation directive. Remediation costs for a site of this scale, involving asbestos-contaminated soil and construction and demolition waste requiring classification, excavation, transport, and licensed disposal, have been publicly estimated at more than $1 million. That figure is consistent with typical rates for asbestos remediation works in Victoria when proper occupational hygiene controls, air monitoring, personal protective equipment, licensed asbestos removalist contractors, and EPA-licensed landfill disposal are factored in. The court order explicitly provides that the remediation obligation survives any transfer of legal title to the property.

EPA Victoria has also publicly indicated that it will pursue the transport companies and waste generators who deposited material at the Diamond Creek site. This represents a cradle-to-grave enforcement posture: the regulator is not limiting its investigation to the receiving landowner but is actively working back through the waste supply chain to identify and prosecute the parties who generated the contaminated soil and construction debris, and the transport operators who moved it to an unlicensed site without using Victoria’s mandatory digital Waste Tracker system. Under current Victorian regulations, all movements of Reportable Priority Waste must be tracked electronically through the Waste Tracker platform, and failure to do so constitutes a separate compliance exposure for generators and transporters alike.

Australian context: personal liability, asbestos in fill, and the Waste Tracker framework

Victoria’s Environment Protection Act 2017, which commenced in July 2021 following a prolonged staged rollout, introduced a general environmental duty as its central organising principle, modelled in part on the safety duty framework that transformed workplace health and safety law across Australia. The Act shifted the regulatory burden toward positive obligation — requiring persons who manage or control activities that may give rise to pollution or waste to understand those risks and take reasonably practicable steps to minimise them, rather than waiting for a specific prohibition to be breached before regulatory exposure arises.

References and related sources

• Primary source: www.epa.vic.gov.au
• ground.news
• sers.net.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: 25 Jul 2026

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