Man fined $10k for illegal dump that left $3m clean-up bill

A man has been fined $10,000 for running an illegal tip on land leased from a suburban Melbourne council, but that penalty was a fraction of the $3 million clean-up bill the council was left with.

Mohamad Yassin Yousef Sadek was convicted of environmental offences in August in the Heidelberg Magistrates' Court, where he was also ordered to pay $5,000 to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cover its costs.

The EPA prosecuted the case, alleging Sadek was a leaseholder on land owned by Whittlesea City Council in 2021 when he did deals with truck drivers to illegally accept industrial waste from their worksites over two months.

The EPA said 11,000 tonnes of contaminated soil and industrial rubbish later had to be cleared from the property in Wollert on Melbourne's northern fringe.

Some of the waste contained asbestos.

The clean-up cost local ratepayers $3 million.

Environmental law expert Brad Jessup said Victoria has an illegal dumping problem, and he was concerned small penalties created a financial incentive for polluters.

"This is an example where the fine was likely less than the costs of [lawfully] disposing of the waste," Dr Jessup said.

"So if you are an unethical business operator, what you're seeing in this judgement is business opportunity."

EPA discovers illegal dumping via tip-off

EPA inspectors first visited the council-owned land in September 2021 following a tip-off that waste was being illegally stored there.

"EPA officers observed built-up areas of mudstone and crushed rock material, textiles, brick fragments, metal, timber and grey fibrous cement materials," the agency said.

It said soil testing detected asbestos at seven locations on the property.

The EPA said Sadek failed to comply with environmental notices it issued over a nearly two-year period.

In July 2023, the EPA ordered the council, as landowner, to remove all industrial waste.

The EPA reported the council had to clear more than 300 truck and trailer loads of contaminated soil and waste from the property, which came with a multi-million-dollar cost.

It took another three years after this for the criminal case against Sadek to be finalised.

In a statement to the ABC, Whittlesea City Council said the scale of environmental damage to its land was significant.

"Council was required by the EPA to undertake remediation works after the head tenant and sub tenants failed to do so," it said.

"With the criminal proceedings against the sub tenants now concluded and majority of the remediation works completed, council is considering all available options to recover the costs incurred."

Calls for larger penalties for polluters 

Dr Jessup said environmental laws had been reformed in recent years, giving prosecutors the power to seek larger fines for polluters and strip them of the proceeds of their offending.

In Sadek's case, neither of those powers were used.

The legal expert said part of the issue was that the EPA preferred to prosecute environmental matters in the magistrates' court.

"The magistrates' court has caps and has limits on the kind of fines it can issue, and there is less willingness to engage with some of the more complex legal topics around sentencing," Dr Jessup said.

"We're not seeing large penalties that deter and we're not seeing recouping of profits."

A public register of EPA court cases that have been finalised shows 49 cases have gone before the magistrates' court since 2025, with just two cases in the Supreme Court and one in the County Court.

Of the cases listed on the EPA's register, the majority of environmental offences resulted in fines of less than $10,000.

Whereas magistrates have to consider a range of factors in handing down fines, he said laws that came in five years ago allowing prosecutors to recover proceeds of environmental offending were more clear-cut.

However, he said he was unaware of any cases where those laws — which he said were a more powerful deterrent — had been used.

"The law that's not being used is essentially an accounting tool," he said, allowing courts to "just take that [profit] away."

He acknowledged it was more expensive and time-consuming to bring cases in higher courts.

The EPA said it considered the appropriate jurisdiction for every matter and was not driven by budget constraints.

"EPA's enforcement decisions are based on the facts, evidence and legal considerations of each case, including the available sentencing and enforcement outcomes," a spokesperson said.