Victorian Landowner Fined $60,000 and Ordered to Fund $1 Million Clean-Up in Landmark EPA Prosecution
Overview of the Landmark Diamond Creek EPA Prosecution
The Heidelberg Magistrates Court has delivered what is believed to be the highest fine ever imposed on an individual under Victoria’s Environment Protection Act 2017, ordering Diamond Creek landowner Joseph Chetcuti to pay a $60,000 penalty following his guilty plea to multiple environmental offences. The court also ordered Chetcuti to fund a site clean-up estimated to exceed $1 million, a remediation liability that remains legally binding on him regardless of whether the property changes hands. EPA Victoria published the outcome on 21 July 2024, and the prosecution has since drawn significant attention from environmental practitioners, property lawyers, and the development sector across the country.
The offending was discovered in May 2025 during a fire at the semi-rural Diamond Creek property, where emergency services and EPA Victoria officers attended and observed operators actively burning industrial construction and demolition waste. Investigators found that asbestos-contaminated soil, classified as a reportable priority waste under Victorian legislation, had been deposited and received at a site not licensed to accept such material. Chetcuti subsequently pleaded guilty to both the unlawful receipt and deposit of waste and to failing to comply with an Environmental Action Notice issued under Section 290(1) of the Act.
For property developers, councils, lawyers acting in transactions, and environmental consultants advising clients across Australia, this ruling is a material shift in how landowner liability for illegal waste and contamination should be understood. The combination of a record individual fine, a seven-figure clean-up mandate, and the confirmation that liability persists through a change of title creates a new benchmark for enforcement risk in Victoria and sends a clear signal to regulators in other jurisdictions.
Key details of the Chetcuti prosecution and Victorian penalties under the Environment Protection Act 2017
Chetcuti faced charges on two distinct grounds. The first was depositing and receiving waste, including reportable priority waste in the form of asbestos-contaminated soil, at a property not licensed under the Environment Protection Act 2017 to accept such material. The second was non-compliance with an Environmental Action Notice (EAN) issued by EPA Victoria under Section 290(1) of the Act. EANs are formal regulatory instruments requiring a person to take specified steps to address an environmental risk or harm. Failure to comply is a standalone criminal offence and carries its own penalties separate from the underlying waste offence.
The $60,000 fine is notable not simply for its quantum but for the context in which it was imposed. Under the Environment Protection Act 2017, which replaced the predecessor Environment Protection Act 1970, penalties were substantially increased to reflect the seriousness of environmental harm and to provide genuine deterrence. The Act introduced a tiered penalty structure, and prosecutions of individuals for priority waste offences can attract significant fines and, in serious cases, terms of imprisonment. The fact that the Heidelberg Magistrates Court reached the $60,000 level for an individual, rather than a corporation, signals that the court treated the conduct as particularly serious. The original waste was construction and demolition material that had been brought to the property for what investigators determined was unlicensed disposal, with the burning designed to reduce volume and conceal the nature of the waste.
Asbestos-contaminated soil is classified as a reportable priority waste in Victoria. This classification is not administrative shorthand. It triggers a mandatory regulatory framework that requires all movements of such material to be electronically tracked through EPA Victoria’s Waste Tracker system. Waste Tracker creates a digital chain of custody from the point of generation to lawful disposal at a licensed facility, and every party in that chain, generator, transporter, and receiver, carries compliance obligations. The absence of Waste Tracker records for asbestos-contaminated soil arriving at a site is itself an immediate indicator that the waste stream has not been lawfully managed.
The court’s determination that the clean-up mandate remains binding on Chetcuti even after any sale of the property is the most consequential legal finding for property transactions. This is not a new principle in contaminated land law, but its explicit application in a criminal sentencing context, tied to a specific individual rather than a corporate entity, reinforces that liability cannot be extinguished by transferring title. A future purchaser of the Diamond Creek property would acquire the land subject to the existing contamination, and Chetcuti would remain personally obligated to fund remediation to the standard required by EPA Victoria, irrespective of his ownership status at the time remediation is completed.
Australian context: landowner liability, priority waste, and contaminated land frameworks across QLD, NSW, VIC and SA
Victoria’s Environment Protection Act 2017 is among the most modernised environmental protection statutes in Australia. Its central organising principle is the General Environmental Duty (GED), which requires all persons who engage in an activity that may pose risks of harm to human health or the environment to understand those risks and take reasonably practicable steps to minimise them. The GED applies to landowners, not just operators. A landowner who accepts fill material without verifying its origin, waste classification, and Waste Tracker compliance is, in EPA Victoria’s interpretation, failing to meet the GED, and this failure can ground prosecution, civil penalties, or regulatory orders requiring remediation at the landowner’s expense.
References and related sources
- Primary source: www.epa.vic.gov.au
- epa.vic.gov.au
- ground.news
- trfm.com.au
- sers.net.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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