The Hon. Sonya Kilkenny, the Victorian Minister for Planning seems well placed to sort out the Wonthaggi Environmental Audit Overlay (EAO) planning crisis.
A commercial litigation and banking and finance lawyer before coming to parliament in November 2014, representing the people of the south-eastern Melbourne suburbs of the Carrum electorate, she also has experience working for the Kimberley Land Council in Broome.
Minister Kilkenny’s bio on the Victorian Parliament website notes this about her areas of interest: “The areas of public policy that she is most passionate about are all about creating jobs for the future.”
Well then, sorting out a problem that is stopping the construction trades in Wonthaggi from working, and making it hard for, principally young local workers, to find somewhere to live should be right in her bailiwick.
What’s it all about? It’s all to do with a decision by the Victorian Planning Authority, the planning arm of the State Government, and the Bass Coast Shire Council to retrospectively apply a highly restrictive planning overlay across a large area of Wonthaggi’s newly gazetted North-East Precinct residential development area, stopping home building in its tracks and costing individual homeowners and building block owners upwards of $20,000 each, and potentially up to $100,000, to deal with claims of a land contamination risk.
Glenda Park, a resident of Stirling Street in the Parklands Estate has written to Minister Kilkenny asking for help.
Her delightful home, built in the allegedly affected area in 2019, is one of the private properties that have had an Environmental Audit Overlay added to her title, without her knowledge.
“Further to my previous email, I have now been informed that this whole contamination issue was identified in 2016,” said Ms Park.
“Our home was one of the first built in Parklands, in 2019.
“Why was nothing done between 2016 and 2019, and then right up until 2024, to act on the identification of possible suspected or known contamination?
“Please use your power as planning minister and take this situation seriously.
“You could use your power to say, correctly, that this audit has been ineffectively overlaid onto developed sites.
“You could prevent this nightmare from continuing and becoming a stranglehold on the growth areas of Wonthaggi.
“I’m asking you to employ common sense and fairness to rectify what surely is a huge mistake,” signed Glenda Park, Wonthaggi.
Ms Park purchased her home in Stirling Street in January 2021 for $620,000 and is now facing the prospect of shelling out $20,000 to $80,000 to have the claims of contamination dealt with and the overlay removed.
Is there actually any contamination on her block or the hundreds of others included in the blanket application of EAOs?
Potentially yes.
A report prepared for the Bass Coast Shire Council in April 2016, by GHD Pty Ltd, one of the world’s most highly regarded water, energy, infrastructure and communities consultancies, found that of the 113 properties in their study area of approximately 640 ha of land in Wonthaggi’s North East housing development area, 16 properties had a ‘High’ PFC rating for contamination, 70 properties had a ‘Medium’ PFC rating, and 27 properties had a ‘Low’ PFC rating.
GHD recommended “that additional studies be completed for the properties identified as having high or medium potential for contamination”.
GHD also said that “Council may wish to implement planning controls such as requiring additional assessment phases on these properties to confirm the findings of this assessment”, issuing permits for residential subdivision.
But the council ignored the advice and continued issuing subdivision permits without including contamination-related conditions.
This has been confirmed in a statement by the VPA which commissioned its own report in May 2019 “which determined that some of the land within the precinct had a medium or high potential for contamination, relating primarily to the historic use of the land for farming and grazing purposes”.
Neither the VPA nor the Bass Coast Shire Council applied contamination overlays to the land until the whole precinct was gazetted on January 18, 2024 by which time hundreds of people, up to 1000, had purchased blocks and hundreds of houses were built, on potentially contaminated land.
Whose fault is it… certainly not the local people who bought the blocks of land in good faith and now find themselves having to pay thousands of dollars to deal with the problem.
Here’s what the Executive Director Regional Victoria, Victorian Planning Authority, Dean Rochfort, said about the issue this week:
"Bass Coast Shire and the VPA are working together to look at ways to minimise the impact on homeowners,” Mr Rochfort said.
As background, the VPA said:
“An Environment Assessment Overlay (EAO) is applied to land where contamination is known or is reasonably expected. Land covered by an EAO requires an environmental audit prior to it being used for a sensitive use, including housing to ensure any contamination can be appropriately remediated before the land is developed.
“Bass Coast Shire rezoned 170 hectares of land for housing development in 2010 due to a lack of residential land supply in the Wonthaggi township. In 2016 they rezoned additional land for housing. As part of the 2016 rezoning, council prepared a contamination report for the land. An EAO was not placed on the land rezoned in either 2010 or 2016.
“In 2018, council requested the Victorian Planning Authority (VPA) assist in the planning of the Wonthaggi North East Precinct which covers a larger area of approximately 630 hectares. In May 2019, the VPA commissioned another contamination report which determined that some of the land within the precinct had a medium or high potential for contamination, relating primarily to the historic use of the land for farming and grazing purposes.
“The VPA at this point alerted council and landowners who were considering developing their land for housing that they needed to conduct a Preliminary Site Investigation. Had this occurred, the cost to get a compliant permit under the EAO would never rested with individual homeowners and would have been borne by the developer.
“Council continued to issue permits for residential subdivision without including contamination-related conditions even after they were made aware of the findings of the April 2016 report and the subsequent contamination report commissioned by the VPA in 2019.”
