By Automated Environmental · For Victorian landlords, asset managers and managing agents. Last reviewed August 2026.
Yes — potentially. In Victoria, the duty to manage contaminated land attaches to whoever is in management or control of the land, and that expressly includes a landlord or owner who holds a legal interest in it — even where a tenant caused the contamination and even if you did not cause it yourself. The lease does not automatically lift that duty off the owner.
This is the single most common blind spot we see in industrial property: a landlord assumes the environmental risk sits with the tenant whose operations created it. Under section 39 of the Environment Protection Act 2017, it often doesn't.
Section 39 of the Environment Protection Act 2017 creates the duty to manage contaminated land. It applies to any person in management or control of contaminated land, requiring them to minimise the risk of harm to human health and the environment so far as reasonably practicable — and it covers groundwater as well as soil.
You are in management or control if you can exercise power over the land — for example because you hold a legal interest as the owner. A landlord plainly does. The tenant, as leaseholder, is also in management or control. The result is that both of you can carry the duty over the same site at the same time.
The duty is built around management or control, not fault. That is a deliberate design choice: the regulator looks to whoever can actually do something about the land now, not just to whoever made the historical mess. So the fact that a tenant's operations caused the contamination does not, by itself, remove your duty as the owner.
You may still have a route to recover costs from the polluter — but that is a separate civil question. It does not discharge your own duty to manage the risk in the meantime, and it does nothing for you if the tenant has since left, folded or is not worth pursuing.
The exposure rarely shows up mid-tenancy. It surfaces at the transitions:
In each case the underlying problem is the same: the owner had no standing view of the site's condition between transactions.
Well-drafted lease clauses matter. An environmental indemnity, a clear make-good obligation and a documented baseline condition report all strengthen your position against the tenant. But they allocate risk between you and the tenant — they do not remove your statutory duty to the regulator, and they are only as good as your ability to enforce them and your knowledge of whether they were ever complied with.
An indemnity from a tenant you never checked on is a paper comfort. The duty to manage stays with you regardless.
The landlords who are protected are the ones who can show they were paying attention. That means a dated, source-traceable record of each site's condition against its obligations — not a one-off report at acquisition that sits in a drawer. For a portfolio, it means routine, proportionate screening across every tenancy, so a problem is found while it is still small and still belongs to an identifiable tenant.
You can be. The duty attaches to current management or control, not to when the contamination occurred. Pre-purchase due diligence tells you what you bought; it does not remove the ongoing duty once you own it.
No. An indemnity is a contractual promise from the tenant — useful, but only enforceable against that tenant and only as valuable as their capacity to pay. It does not discharge your statutory duty to EPA.
Then you are very likely the person left holding the duty. Former tenants can be pursued for cost recovery, but if they cannot be found or cannot pay, the management obligation remains with whoever is in management or control — typically you.
Not as a first step. A proportionate, routine check of each site against its obligations tells you whether there is anything that genuinely warrants a detailed investigation — before you commit to one.
Related reading: Who is responsible for contaminated land in Victoria? Section 39 explained, PSI vs DSI vs compliance check, and cutting the cost of multi-site environmental compliance.
This article is general information only, not legal advice. The law and EPA guidance change; confirm your specific position with a qualified practitioner before acting.