Victoria’s environmental watchdog failed to engage with communities when approving locations to dump contaminated soil from the troubled West Gate Tunnel Project, believing it would be a “waste of time”, the state’s ombudsman has found.

The multi-billion-dollar tunnel, which will be an alternative to the city’s heavily congested West Gate Bridge, was originally scheduled to be completed by September this year.

But the project is running at least two years late and costs have blown out after soil contaminated with dangerous chemicals used in firefighting foam – per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – was discovered at the construction site in 2019.

Ombudsman Deborah Glass investigated the Environment Protection Authority’s (EPA) decision to approve three sites to receive the soil.

In her report, tabled in parliament on Tuesday, she found the organisation “did its job according to the science” but “plainly failed to convince the community of this”.

“The EPA told us consulting the community would be a ‘waste of time’ and that discussions ‘could not be fruitful because of the level of anger in the community’,” the report read.

“In effect, the EPA thought there was no point in consulting because it knew what the community thought,”

Glass said the EPA took the approach of “putting factual information on the website”, though much of it was redacted.

“This may have achieved the bare minimum required by legislation, but it led to a yawning gulf between the EPA’s approach and the community’s expectations of how its environmental regulator should behave,” she wrote.

The EPA’s chief executive, Lee Miezis, on Tuesday apologised for the organisation’s efforts at community engagement.

“The protection of the community and the protection of the environment was always at the forefront of decision making,” he told reporters.

“We acknowledge and accept there were shortcomings in how we engaged with and explained those considerations to the community.

“For the distress that that has caused to those communities, we certainly apologise.”

In 2020, the EPA had approved three sites – Hi-Quality in Bulla, Maddingley Brown Coal in Bacchus Marsh and Cleanaway in Ravenhall – to receive up to 3m tonnes of waste, but withdrew the approvals after supreme court challenges by community groups.

In early 2021, the watchdog again approved the sites and Hi-Quality was eventually chosen by the tunnel’s builders, CPB Contractors and John Holland, to receive the soil.

“The site that is receiving this soil is safe. There is no risk being presented to communities because we took a very conservative approach to achieving those outcomes,” Miezis said, noting the operator was required to safely contain PFAS at 10 times the amount likely to be present.

In her report, Glass said the EPA did not give “any consideration to human rights” when making its decisions, despite it being the focus of affected communities who were worried about the effect of PFAS on themselves and their children, as well as waterways and wildlife.

She said senior officials denied there was any government interference but “there is little doubt the EPA was under pressure to ‘fix’ the problem to get the project back on track”. She noted the authority helped the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning develop bespoke regulations to enable potential sites to receive the soil.

Miezis conceded all regulators are under “some sort of pressure” but said EPA always thoroughly and rigorously assessed applications.

“People who want to do projects want a decision yesterday. It’s not novel. It’s not unusual for us or for any regulator to experience that. But our decisions are made on science and on law,” he said.

Since March 2022, the EPA has tested the excavated soil and published the results on its website. It has found the levels of PFAS has remained in line with their assessment and well below the danger level.

The authority has also begun monthly information sessions for the community near the Bulla site.

“While this must be a relief for local communities, much grief and angst may have been spared if the EPA had engaged effectively with the public from the outset and listened to them,” Glass wrote.

Glass made four recommendations, which have been accepted by the EPA, including to publish the unredacted environment management plans submitted by all three landfill operators in 2021 and assessment reports for those plans.



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