Hendra residents use RTI to challenge McDonald’s development on deregistered legacy service station site.

Overview

Residents in Hendra, Brisbane, have lodged a Right to Information (RTI) request under the Right to Information Act 2009 (Qld), demanding access to environmental decontamination records for a proposed McDonald’s drive-through development at 330 Nudgee Road. The subject site operated as a service station from the 1960s before being remediated and removed from both Queensland’s Environmental Management Register (EMR) and Contaminated Land Register (CLR) in 1999. Brisbane City Council approved the development application without conducting a site-specific environmental review, on the basis that the site had been removed from the state registers decades ago and that its assessment process simply follows state government rules for deregistered land.

The community’s concern centres on a proposed 10 per cent increase in ground permeability resulting from the new development layout. Residents and local advocates argue that altered surface hydrology could mobilise residual petroleum hydrocarbons or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into the surrounding groundwater. Three groundwater monitoring wells remain active on the site, located near an operational mechanics workshop, raising further questions about ongoing contamination sources and receptor pathways. Local resident Bill Moore, identified in connection with the RTI filing, stated that transparency is the only way to restore public trust in the process.

For Australian environmental professionals, developers, and their legal advisers, this case crystallises a regulatory blind spot that is far broader than a single Brisbane suburb. A site that was assessed as clean and removed from a state contamination register in 1999 was never evaluated against the substantially more stringent criteria introduced by the National Environment Protection (Assessment of Site Contamination) Measure (ASC NEPM) 2013 and its subsequent amendments. When local councils treat historical register removals as a definitive clearance, and when development applications alter the site’s hydrology or land use, the conditions that justified that original clearance can no longer be assumed to hold. The Hendra case makes that exposure visible in a very public way.

Key details of the Hendra RTI dispute and its technical foundations

The site at 330 Nudgee Road has a contamination history consistent with a fuel retail and storage operation dating to the 1960s. Service station sites of that era routinely stored leaded petrol and diesel in underground storage tanks (USTs), used chlorinated solvents for parts washing, and generated hydrocarbon-impacted soil and groundwater as a matter of routine operation. The remediation carried out in 1999 was assessed under the regulatory and technical standards applicable at that time, which were considerably less demanding than those currently in force. Following that remediation, the site was removed from both the EMR and the CLR, effectively releasing it from active state government oversight under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld).

The central technical concern raised by residents involves the proposed 10 per cent increase in ground permeability. This is not a trivial change in the context of a legacy hydrocarbon site. Increased infiltration through surface materials alters groundwater recharge rates, changes hydraulic gradients, and can remobilise dissolved-phase contaminant plumes that have been relatively stable under the existing surface conditions. On a former service station site, residual contamination commonly includes total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX), and potentially PFAS compounds from aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) used in fire suppression training or spill response. The presence of three groundwater monitoring wells adjacent to an active mechanics workshop introduces a further complication: that workshop represents a potential ongoing source of hydrocarbons and lubricants, meaning the site conceptual model is not static.

The 1999 remediation certificate is the document at the heart of this dispute. The ASC NEPM was originally made in 1999 but was comprehensively amended in 2013, with that 2013 version introducing Health Screening Levels (HSLs) that explicitly address vapour intrusion pathways for volatile and semi-volatile petroleum hydrocarbons. Prior to those amendments, vapour intrusion as a standalone exposure pathway received far less rigorous treatment in standard site assessments. A site assessed and signed off in 1999 would not have been evaluated against current HSLs for the vapour intrusion pathway, nor against the current framework for individual petroleum hydrocarbon fractions. The ASC NEPM 2013 also introduced updated investigation levels for a broader range of contaminants and formalised the requirement to develop a detailed site conceptual model that accounts for all plausible exposure pathways.

Brisbane City Council’s response to the community concerns, that its assessment simply follows state government rules because the site is no longer on the registers, exposes a structural gap in Queensland’s planning and environmental framework. The Planning Act 2016 (Qld) and associated development assessment rules do not automatically require a fresh environmental site assessment for a site that has been removed from the EMR or CLR, even where the proposed development materially changes the site’s hydrology, land use intensity, or receptor exposure. This means the protective intent of the ASC NEPM 2013 can be circumvented not through any deliberate act but simply through the passage of time and a change in the regulatory status of the land.

Australian context: how Queensland’s contaminated land registers create a gap in NEPM 2013 oversight

Queensland’s dual-register system, comprising the EMR for sites with a history of contaminating activities and the CLR for sites where contamination has been confirmed, is administered under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld). Removal from either register following remediation is intended to signal that the site no longer poses an unacceptable risk under the standards applicable at the time of assessment. However, those standards have changed materially since 1999, and removal from the registers does not trigger any automatic reassessment when development proposals are subsequently lodged.

References and related sources

• Primary source: village-voice.com.au
• NEPM Assessment of Site Contamination

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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: 10 Apr 2026

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