By Automated Environmental · For Victorian landowners, landlords and property managers. Last reviewed August 2026.
In Victoria, the person responsible for managing contaminated land is whoever is in management or control of that land. Under section 39 of the Environment Protection Act 2017, that duty sits with you if you can exercise power over the land — for example because you hold a legal interest in it as the owner, a leaseholder (tenant) or a committee of management, or because you have access to or use of it.
Critically, the duty applies to you even if you did not cause the contamination. It also covers groundwater, not just soil. That single point is the one that surprises most landowners: you can inherit the obligation along with the title.
Section 39 of the Environment Protection Act 2017 creates the duty to manage contaminated land. It requires a person in management or control of contaminated land to minimise the risk of harm to human health and the environment from that contamination, so far as reasonably practicable.
In practice, that means you must:
The duty is deliberately framed around management or control, not fault. The logic is that the person who can do something about the land is the person who must — regardless of who made the mess.
EPA Victoria is explicit about the categories. You manage or control land if you can exercise power over it — for example, if you:
More than one person can hold the duty over the same land at the same time. A landlord and a tenant can both be in management or control of the one site, and both carry the duty — it is not automatically transferred from one to the other by the lease.
Yes. The duty to manage attaches to management or control of the land, not to the act of contaminating it. EPA's own guidance states you have a duty to manage contamination on your land even if you did not cause the contamination.
That does not leave you without recourse. Where someone else caused the contamination, cost-recovery against the polluter may be available — but that is a separate question from whether you must manage the risk in the meantime. The duty to manage sits with whoever is in management or control now.
Section 39 is the duty to manage. Section 40 is a separate duty to notify EPA of notifiable contamination — broadly, contamination that meets a prescribed threshold, such as where the reasonable cost to manage it is likely to exceed a set figure. Managing and notifying are distinct obligations: you can owe one without the other, and meeting one does not discharge the other.
It is the same test used across the Act's General Environmental Duty. What is reasonably practicable depends on the level of risk, what you know or ought reasonably to know about it, the availability and suitability of ways to manage it, and the cost of doing so relative to the risk. A low-risk legacy site does not demand the same response as an active source near a sensitive receptor — but you can only make that call once you have looked.
The defensible sequence is to understand what you hold before it is tested. For a single site, that usually means a screening step to establish whether there is a plausible contamination issue and whether the duty is engaged. For owners and landlords responsible for many sites, it means having a standing view across the portfolio rather than discovering obligations one transaction at a time.
You can both hold the duty. The tenant's activities may have caused the contamination, but as the owner you can remain in management or control and therefore carry the duty to manage. Recovering costs from the polluter is a separate matter from meeting your own duty.
Yes. The duty to manage contaminated land expressly extends to groundwater, which is often where the real risk sits on industrial land.
Failure to manage is not automatically an offence in itself, but it can breach the General Environmental Duty, which carries criminal and civil penalties. The exposure is real even where no single act is charged.
Not necessarily as a first step. A proportionate screening of each site against its obligations can tell you whether there is anything to manage and whether a more detailed investigation is warranted — before you commit to one.
Related reading: Landlord liability for tenant contamination in Victoria, PSI vs DSI vs compliance check: what does your site actually need?, and our guide to Environmental Management Plans.
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.