Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were in Lismore to launch a new program which has received up to $5 million to assess flood-contaminated land. This funding is open for both public and private land, and will also including the training of council staff across the 7 LGA's to prepare for future flood events.

Lismore and Northern Rivers residents and small businesses will be able to access a new NSW EPA program supporting the management of contaminated lands following the devastating floods in early 2022.

NSW EPA CEO Tony Chappel announced the new program at Riverside Park and said the EPA is committed to doing all it can to help the region recover.

“Our role at the EPA is to protect the community and environment, and this program is about ensuring contaminated land is addressed so people have peace of mind about their land,” Mr Chappel said.

“I cannot begin to imagine how hard it has been for the community to return home after the flooding only to face a painstaking clean-up.

“We want to give Northern Rivers communities who have made that extraordinary effort the certainty that the land they live on is healthy and safe.

“This program will provide free, independent assessments for eligible properties, which will reveal if soils have been contaminated."

It will remain open to June 2024, and members of the community can go to: and register for testing at no cost. The application isn't bureaucratically difficult, and Tony told media he is confident that this timeline will cover the whole community.

"There are a whole group of chemicals that we call forever chemicals because they are not water soluble and get spread by events like the floods this year," Tony explained, "So, we are always mindful of that, and we need to phase those out. We are making progress on this, but there are a lot of legacy contaminants.

"The waterways are often particularly impacted, not because of the turbidity, but because of the particular chemicals which can go into sediments and that can be quite damaging for the ecosystem in particular rivers and catchments, beyond that, the last 4 years have been catastrophic for our landscape. We had the unprecedented intensity and scale of the fires, then the incredible precipitation event, so while nature is resilient, human activity, particularly chemicals we put into the environment, can have a real impact."

"We have a major focus this year on the safe use of chemicals, and some of these risks too with the clean-up, this has been a priority to get these chemicals out of the land and rivers as much as possible, but it's an ongoing work. Part of this work will give us lots of useful data. We don't expect to find major risks through the sampling we are doing, but our first priority is to help the community feel confident that is the case".

“If a property is deemed to be contaminated, we will also provide landholder assistance in cleaning-up soils and returning the environment to the best state possible.

“I want to thank all our EPA officers who have been working with other agencies to remove waste and debris from across the region.

“The volumes have been enormous and in the past week alone, we have removed 261 cubic metres of debris from our waterways, equal to that of three semi-trailer trucks.

"Our message for landholders and businesses is that due to the effects of climate change, looking back to historical floods and planning for the 1 in 100 year floods, is no longer adequate, and all chemicals must be secured and placed in locations which are out of the flood risk based at least on the levels seen in the floods in February."

"We have programs to collect chemicals, and encourage businesses, farmers and community members to call on us to support them to dispose of these safely. We aren't there to police what is in drums, we want to help to keep the wider community and environment safe through our disposal program."

The funding will also support the seven eligible councils (Lismore, Richmond Valley, Ballina, Kyogle, Tweed, Byron, Clarence) to assess any flood contamination to public areas as well as providing resources to manage contamination from future natural disasters.

The NSW EPA runs a number of programs to help regions impacted by floods, with the Shoreline Clean- up Program removing more than 17,800 cubic metres of flood debris from waterways in an area extending from the Queensland border to the Illawarra.

The Flood Recovery Program for Contaminated Lands is jointly funded by the State and Commonwealth disaster recovery funding agreement (DRFA). Residents can now apply on the Service NSW website.

The EPA has also launched an interactive visual flood debris map which demonstrates the scale and scope of the clean-up effort, as well as sharing stories from the community and EPA officers.