Overview
On 21 July 2026, the Heidelberg Magistrates Court handed down what is believed to be the highest individual fine ever imposed under Victoria’s Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic). Joseph Chetcuti was fined $60,000 and ordered to pay $12,000 in legal costs after pleading guilty to operating an unlicensed industrial waste dumping and burning operation on a 19,000 square metre property in Diamond Creek, Victoria. The court also ordered Chetcuti to fund and complete the full remediation of the site, with EPA Victoria estimating clean-up costs will exceed $1 million. Critically, that remediation obligation is legally binding and survives any future sale of the property.
The case came to light in May 2025 following a major fire at the Diamond Creek site that drew the attention of both EPA Victoria and emergency services. What investigators uncovered was not an opportunistic or small-scale dumping incident. The site had been used as a highly organised operation for receiving and burning construction and demolition debris and other industrial waste streams. Subsequent soil testing revealed widespread asbestos contamination across the property, elevating what might otherwise have been a waste licensing matter into a serious public health and environmental remediation case.
For contaminated land consultants, environmental auditors, property developers, and legal advisers operating across Australia, this ruling sends a clear message. EPA Victoria is prepared to pursue individual liability to its full extent under the 2017 Act, and the courts are willing to back that approach with record penalties. The personal, non-transferable nature of the remediation order is particularly significant and reshapes how contaminated asset transactions must be approached going forward.
Key details of the Diamond Creek illegal waste ruling
Chetcuti pleaded guilty to two categories of offending under the Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic). The first involved depositing and receiving industrial waste and reportable priority waste at a site that held no licence to accept such materials. The second was non-compliance with an Environmental Action Notice (EAN) issued under Section 290(1) of the Act. These are not minor administrative breaches. Reportable priority waste in Victoria covers a range of hazardous materials including certain contaminated soils, asbestos-containing materials, and specified industrial residues that carry strict tracking and disposal requirements under the Environment Protection Regulations 2021 (Vic).
The property itself covers 19,000 square metres, which is approximately 1.9 hectares. The scale of the operation on that land was substantial enough to sustain what EPA Victoria characterised as an organised illegal waste business, not a simple case of a landowner allowing rubbish to accumulate. Construction and demolition debris is a common feedstock for illegal dumping operations because legitimate disposal attracts significant levies in Victoria. The financial incentive to avoid those levies by diverting waste to unlicensed sites is well understood by regulators, and the Chetcuti prosecution reflects EPA Victoria’s stated commitment to disrupting that illegal market.
Soil testing conducted following the May 2025 fire confirmed asbestos contamination across the site. Under the NEPM 2013 framework (the National Environment Protection Measure for the Assessment of Site Contamination), asbestos in soil requires assessment against health investigation levels and must be characterised in terms of asbestos type, friability, and concentration before any remediation strategy can be scoped. The discovery of asbestos transforms the remediation scope considerably, requiring licensed asbestos removal contractors, specific waste classification and tracking under Waste Tracker, and validated clearance certificates before any re-use or development of the land could be contemplated.
The remediation cost estimate of more than $1 million reflects those complexities. More consequential from a legal standpoint is the court’s order that the obligation to complete and fund that remediation stays with Chetcuti personally, regardless of whether he sells or otherwise transfers the property. This is not a standard civil debt that can be discharged through a property settlement. It is a personal statutory obligation embedded in the court order, meaning any prospective purchaser of the Diamond Creek site would be acquiring land encumbered by an active, judicially confirmed remediation obligation held by the vendor.
Australian context: individual liability and contaminated land regulation across states
Victoria’s Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic) represents one of the most comprehensively reformed environmental protection statutes in Australia. The 2017 Act introduced a general environmental duty, strengthened the personal liability provisions applicable to individuals and officers, and provided regulators with a broader suite of enforcement tools including Environmental Action Notices under Section 290. The Chetcuti prosecution is a direct product of those 2017 reforms being exercised to their full effect. Other Australian jurisdictions are at varying stages of comparable legislative reform, but the direction of travel is consistent. New South Wales operates under the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (NSW), which similarly provides for individual liability and clean-up notices that can attach to persons rather than solely to land parcels. Queensland’s Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld) and South Australia’s Environment Protection Act 1993 (SA) carry analogous provisions, though the penalty scales and enforcement cultures differ between jurisdictions.
The NEPM 2013 framework is the national standard that underpins site contamination assessment across all Australian states and territories, providing a common technical baseline for health investigation levels, soil and groundwater assessment criteria, and remediation validation requirements regardless of which state’s legislation applies to a given site.
References and related sources
- Primary source: www.epa.vic.gov.au
- epa.vic.gov.au
- epa.vic.gov.au
- sers.net.au
- detsi.qld.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: 26 Jul 2026
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