Going to ground: Lotsearch maps Australia’s contamination hot spots

TEN years ago Lotsearch founders Howard Waldron and Peter Rodgers set themselves a “ginormous task” to uncover Australia’s hidden and forgotten sites affected by soil and water contamination.

Accessing historical telephone books and trade directories from every town and city across the country, the spatial intelligence and risk mapping experts pinpointed millions of individual businesses which may have contributed to a site’s soil and water contamination and identified over 260,000 known and potential sites of concern. 

“We have created maps of historical polluting companies Australia-wide based on their old addresses,” Waldron tells Australian Conveyancer magazine of the painstaking work which uses optical character recognition software, and components of AI.

“The old phone books list over three million businesses and their associated activities, ranging from abattoirs (A) to zinc manufacturers (Z), including dry cleaners, service stations, and other potential contamination sources.”

Combining the valuable data from the phone directories along with other historical research projects, 50,000 historical maps, three million historical aerial photographs, and known data from government and other agencies, Lotsearch now has Australia’s largest and most accurate historical landuse database and is the leading provider of environmental risk reports with a specific focus on contamination.

“We have scanned, extracted and digitised all that information to provide high-level insights on the known and potential contamination issues across Australia,” says Waldron. “It was a ginormous task considering the sheer geographical size of the country.

“Our research helps to fill the gap between what is known and reported by environmental regulators, and what is not known and is potentially contaminated.

“We have pioneered the development of environmental information and insights here in Australia, and we have identified over 260,000 known and potentially contaminated sites across the country. That’s not to say that they are all contaminated, of course, but they have been used for an activity in the past that may have caused contamination.”

Using their historical data, Lotsearch can provide conveyancers and property lawyers with a Lotsearch Environmental – Contaminated Land Screening Report which includes a bespoke assessment of the potential for both historical and more recent contamination to affect a site.

“We are dealing with a legacy of an industrial past and that’s now often where the towns and cities are growing,” says Waldron. “So this is where our research is invaluable – identifying the risk hotspots so environmental consultants can then carry out the appropriate testing and assessments of a site.”

Waldron says if a Lotsearch report comes back with red flags on a particular site he would recommend further investigation.

“We say if you’re a lawyer or a conveyancer, working on behalf of a property purchaser or vendor, we would suggest the next steps would be to see if the property is on an EPA register or ask for more information,” he says.

“If the client wants to get another expert opinion, then an environmental consultant would be able to do a preliminary site investigation, and then possibly a detailed site investigation which would involve testing of the site.

“Following an assessment the consultant can provide advice and recommendations to the client.”