The latest screwed-up example of Australia’s politico-housing complex has the NSW Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) hiding “significant” chemical contamination from the public in a bid to support property values. From The ABC:
The review, written by Professor Mark Taylor and Isabella Cosenza, found the internal guidelines state that declaring land, particularly residential land, can affect the valuation of a property and the EPA does not declare off-site residential land to avoid unnecessarily blighting the land.
But Mr Buffier admitted the guidelines were confusing.
“It’s a little bit ambiguous and we are looking at our guidelines now just to make sure it’s absolutely clear,” he said.
Opposition environment spokeswoman Penny Sharpe said the EPA’s guidelines suggest important information is not being published.
“It’s clear from the review that there are internal guidelines working to hide information from the public on the basis that the EPA for some reason has decided it wants to be concerned about property prices,” she said.
Ms Sharpe has called on the Government to address the issue.
“It is not the EPA’s job to be worrying about house prices. It’s the EPA’s job to be watching over contaminated lands, informing the public, making sure it’s remediated and monitoring ongoing contamination.”
She also said transparency for home buyers and investors is necessary.
“Families rely on the information that’s available when they’re purchasing property and they need to know if their kids are playing in the backyard or they’re planting fruit and vegetables that they’re not planting that into contaminated land,” she said.
The SMH has more:
Macquarie University professor Mark Taylor, who led the review, found the authority had decided “not to routinely declare all sites where the contamination is significant enough to warrant regulation”.
“I remain uncomfortable about this inconsistency,” Professor Taylor told Fairfax Media…
During his investigation, the authority told Professor Taylor that “declaring land, particularly residential land, can affect the valuation of a property”.
“This can be an unfair penalty for innocent owners where the contamination of their land is being effectively managed”, it said…
It seems the EPA considers maintaining property values more important than people’s health.
Potential buyers deserve to know if the land underpinning their homes is safe. Refusing to disclose information about contamination opens the EPA up to claims of tacit collusion with the development industry, who would prefer such information remain secret.
