Informing Unsewered Land Purchasers about Wastewater Issues - Section 32 or 173Agree?

[Callum EHO]

As discussed in my presentation, there are both advantages and disadvantages to flagging onsite waste water management issues on properties with either Section 173 Agreements or as part of preparations of information in Section 32 Statements for the sale of land.

The advise to contact the Victorian Department of Justice Consumer Affairs section was followed and we should hear back in a few weeks. They sounded genuinely interested and demonstrated a good understanding of the issues.

I explained we were getting conflicting legal advice and confusion about these matters and it was a significant environmental and publlic health risk with major satutory and strategic implications for unsewered townships.

Put your questions here and I will post the answers here as we get them !

If it is legal to do what we are proposing with support of Section 32 to raise awareness and drive better and more informed wastewater decision making then it will be a significant breakthrough and likely to be of interest interstate as well.

[Callum EHO]

I have been asking around and it sounds like Section 32 Statements can only have very limited things linked to them because failure to disclose can reverse the property transaction at great expense to the original land owner.

I guess if Councils are writing to land owners with septic tanks in general then they could recommend the letter or document or details be disclosed along with the documents prepared for the Section 32 Statement and settlement. ( but this would only be a recommendation and not have any legal effect if they did not disclose them - it would however potentially raise the suspicions of the purchaser or delay negotiations until the documents were provided if settlement was held up. )

There are probably several similar standard documents we need to look at preparing.

1. General Information for Owners of Septic Tank Systems
http://forums.permaculture.org.au/sh...ight=unsewered

2. More Specific Information relating to a know problem, type of system, age of system, or soil issue etc.

3. General Generic Advice to Anyone Purchasing Unsewered Land (Including gaining owners consent to access Council's septic tank record)

(see thread)

4. Advice to a new Land Owner where no request for a Land Information Certificate was recieved (they may not have asked the hard questions about the septic or may not even know that it is there !)