Contaminated Property Next Door??

I have a 1 hectare block of land in a Victorian Rural town. My block of land is zoned residential and I have an application in for subdivision. My block of land shares a boundary with a disused service station. The disused service has not been used as a service station for a number of years however it has had a number of different uses, one of which was a butchers shop. At this present time it is vacant and up for lease.

My application that I currently have with council requires me to determine whether there is any contamination along the boundary from the old service station to my property.

This requires some professional who is suitably qualified to perform an analysis along the boundary by drilling test soil samples and performing some sort of analysis and providing me with a report for council.

Has anybody used such a body to do this type of report.

I have checked this property against the EPA register for contaminated sites, it is not listed on the EPA register but that doesn’t really mean much.

Any suggestions?


wombat
 
Hi,

Most engineers can organise the test for you. The soil samples are sent off to a lab for testing $150+ and the engineer writes up the report, another $300 - thanks for coming. You might get it done cheaper, but that's what I've paid recently.

If your engineer hasn't done this before, get one who has done commercial work where it's a routine test for basements.

But more importantly, who will be responsible for the contaminant if found on your block? Will council pass the buck to you to clean it up and pursue the polluter?

MC
 
Thanks Michael, I presume you simply mean a geotechnical engineer.

The feedback I have received so far is that I would require something along the lines of an EPA certified enviromental engineer - which is what I would probably need if there were contaminants that need to be cleaned up.

Initially I simply would like to establish whether there are contaminants or not, so a geotechnical engineer sounds like he can do the job.

If there are contaminants.........lets cross that bridge if and when we get there :)

wombat
 
Environmental testing

Hi Wombat,

An environmental consultancy would be the best place to start if you would like to undertake testing of soil on you property. I can provide you with details of a good one if you are interested!

The council has issued a requirement for you to test the soil on your property due the potential human health and ecological risks associated with developing residential properties where petroleum hydrocarbon impact exists. In a nut shell, if there is impacted soil in the near surface soils (generally the top few metres) then there is a risk of exposure to humans through dermal contact, ingestion and/or vapour inhalation.

A number of factors can help determine the potential for your property to have been impacted by the neighboring petrol station, including the local geology (clay/siltstone/basalt/sand?), the location of your site relative to the petrol station (i.e. is your property down slope of the petrol station?), the depth to groundwater and whether there are any signs of stress to vegetation on your site.

The geology underlying the sites can determine the ability for petroleum hydrocarbons to migrate through soil. Migration can be relatively poor where the site is underlain by unfractured bedrock or firm clays, however, where the soils are porous or the bedrock is fractured, contaminant migration can be quite fast.

If your property is up gradient of the adjacent former service station, it is less likely that a potential petroleum hydrocarbon plume has impacted on your property. Obviously the opposite is true if your property is down topographic/hydraulic gradient.

Where groundwater has been impacted by petroleum hydrocarbons, the potential for it to migrate is increased considerably.

Just on that, groundwater contamination is probably more of an issue than soil contamination and is often treated as such in the industry. The reasons for this are that soil can be easily (but expensively) removed or it can be covered using an impermeable layer such as clay, plastic or conctrete. Groundwater is more difficult to clean-up given the ability for contaminants to dissolve and migrate rapidly.

Lastly, have a quick look around and see if there's patches of soil along the boundary with the service station that don't support grass or have trees and shrubs that look a bit stressed. This might provide some clue as to whether there is petroleum hydrocarbon contamination in soil and/or groundwater.

Cheers
 
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