Councils will be responsible for regulation of underground fuel tanks from September and the transition in Southern NSW will be overseen through a project funded by the NSW EPA.
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The Riverina And Murray Joint Organisation was one of 10 recipients in a grant round, receiving $419,460, and Jessica Conner has been employed for the next three years to help councils better manage potentially hazardous contaminated land.
RAMJO covers 11 councils in Southern NSW including Albury, Federation and Berrigan, with Ms Conner being based on the border.
For a site to be considered "potentially hazardous", there is an activity taking place that could contaminate land, ranging from industrial activities to storage of underground petroleum storage systems at service stations.
Ms Conner said there were more than 20 types of potentially contaminating activity that councils looked out for.
A previous project running from 2014 to 2017 developed a framework for councils approving permits for such sites, but Ms Conner's current role will focus mainly on petrol storage.
"There used to be UPSS at general corner stores, so that's the historical part that comes into this if they're still in the ground, but there's also agricultural activities where tanks might be stored," she said.
"There's a requirement under the UPSS regulation whereby those sites have to produce six-monthly reports.
"Council's role in that as of the first of September, will be making sure they get those reports and going from there if anything further is required."
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Ms Conner said councils had internal registers of contaminated land and potentially hazardous contaminated land.
"A part of this project is actually to assist them in identifying more potentially contaminating activity, to build on that register," she said.
"The EPA does have their own contaminated land register, which is publicly available online."
RAMJO executive officer Bridgett Leopold said Ms Conner's technical knowledge of UPSS and seven years' experience in contaminated land management would be of great support.
"Jessica will be able to source valuable information about the knowledge they gained from their participation in the contaminated land management framework that was developed with the grant funding in 2014," she said.
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