You are here: Home > Contaminated land > Record of notices > About the record

About the CLM record of notices

What's in the record?

The contaminated land public record is a searchable database of:

• orders made under Part 3 of the Contaminated Land Management Act 1997 (CLM Act)
• approved voluntary management proposals under the CLM Act that have not been fully carried out and where the approval of the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has not been revoked
• site audit statements provided to the EPA under section 53B of the CLM Act that relate to significantly contaminated land
• where practicable, copies of anything formerly required to be part of the public record
• actions taken by EPA under section 35 or 36 of the Environmentally Hazardous Chemicals Act 1985 (EHC Act)*

* Some notices under section 35 of the EHC Act were issued by the State Pollution Control Commission, which was the NSW Government agency responsible for managing contaminated sites before the EPA was established in 1992.

Notices

Actions taken by the EPA involve written notices. Section 58 of the CLM Act requires the EPA to make copies or details of these notices available to the public.

Changes to notices from 1 July 2009

The record includes all notices issued under the CLM Act including those prior to the commencement of the CLM Amendment Act 2008.

Terminology prior to 1 July 2009	Former CLM Act section	Terminology on or after 1 July 2009	Current CLM Act section
Not applicable	Nil	Preliminary investigation orders	Section 10
Declaration of an investigation area	Section 15	Declaration of significantly contaminated land	Section 11
Declaration of a remediation site	Section 21	Declaration of significantly contaminated land	Section 11
Investigation orders	Section 17	Management orders	Section 14
Remediation orders	Section 23	Management orders	Section 14
Voluntary investigation proposals	Section 19	Approved voluntary management proposals	Section 17
Voluntary remediation proposals	Section 26	Approved voluntary management proposals	Section 17
Maintenance of remediation notice	Section 28	Ongoing maintenance orders	Section 28
Site audit statement	Section 53B	Site audit statement	Section 53B

The record includes copies of the abovementioned notices.

On 1 July 2009, the former terminologies will be taken to be the new corresponding terminology where appropriate. When searching the database for notices issued prior to the commencement of the CLM Act amendments, these notices are listed under the former CLM Act section numbers. For example a declaration of a remediation site is listed under notice '21'.

Notification policy

In accordance with section 11(5) of the CLM Act, the EPA has prepared a Notification Policy to allow transparency in the declaration process. The EPA directly notifies those it suspects to be responsible for the contamination, the landowner, occupier and the local authority, in addition to publishing notifications in the NSW Government Gazette and online via the contaminated land public record. The EPA can also adopt additional communication strategies as required to ensure all relevant stakeholders are informed of declarations.

Area number

An area number is a unique number used by the EPA to identify a particular area of land that it regulates under the CLM Act. The same area number links all EPA notices issued under the CLM Act in relation to that area of land. In the past it was also known as a UB number. The UB stood for unhealthy building (land) and was related to the Unhealthy Building Land Act 1990, which has now been repealed. The area number is generally a four-digit number starting with a 3, e.g. 3456. 

More about unhealthy building land

What's not in the record

Section 60 notifications

The record only includes documents that are required to be placed on the record by section 58 of the CLM Act. It does not include notifications under section 60 of the CLM Act.

Under section 60, a person whose activities have contaminated land or a landowner whose land has been contaminated are required to notify the EPA when they become aware of the contamination. These notifications are not an accurate indicator of the EPA's regulatory involvement with contaminated land under the CLM Act as:

• Section 60 notification is only one way the EPA may become aware of contaminated sites (for instance, a third party may notify the agency).
• Notification under section 60 does not automatically mean that a site will be regulated by the EPA under the CLM Act. When the EPA receives a report under section 60 it will determine whether the contamination is significant enough to warrant regulation. In some circumstances it may consider that the contamination is not significant enough to warrant regulation.

Personal information

Certain personal information that appears on the hard copy of the notices issued by the EPA is not displayed on this record because of the requirements of the NSW Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998. This prohibits disclosure of the name of an individual who is the occupier, owner or person responsible for contamination of a contaminated site or the address of such an individual, except in certain circumstances.

To obtain this information you must complete a statutory declaration that clearly states the information you require and how you intend to use it and send it to: