By ALECIA PINNER: apinner@mmpgroup.com.au
ENDEAVOUR Hills resident Peter Van Helmond has made an expensive and unwelcome discovery beneath his back lawn.
Mr Van Helmond, who has lived in Kinkead Crescent for about seven
years, wanted to build an extension so his daughter, Michelle, and three
grandchildren could move in.
He called in a soil inspector, who found an old swimming pool, filled with rubbish, buried below the surface.
“He had to get in a big digger,” Mr Van Helmond said.
The rubbish excavated from the hole included car tyres, broken
bricks, concrete and galvanised steel. Removing the three-metre-high
pile of junk, and shoring up foundations, has already cost Mr Van
Helmond close to $8000.
“It costs $165 a cubic metre and $5 a tyre to take it to the tip,” he said.
Mr Van Helmond approached Casey council and the Environment
Protection Authority to find out if there were regulations about dumping
rubbish in a backyard and covering it up. The EPA told him it would
only get involved if chemical pollution was evident and directed him to
the council, which in turn referred him to the EPA.
Mr Van Helmond is pushing for more stringent records of add-on
developments, such as pools, to be kept and provided to home buyers.
“If the council says you’ve got to apply to have a pool installed,
the section 32 should show it was there,” he said. “The REIV [Real
Estate Institute of Victoria] should be aware of this.”
Mr Van Helmond has undertaken “back-breaking work” and paid for an engineer and inspector to get his project on track.
“I just think the person who did this should take responsibility and I want to make people aware,” he said.
The property’s former owner, Vince Lohrey, told the Journal he owned a bin-hire company at the time he lived in Kinkead Crescent
but was not aware that rubbish was buried in the backyard.
