Dioxin fears cloud Fawkner vehicle store permit on Agent Orange site

On 9 August 2026, Fawkner resident Selina Page objected to a planning permit application for 102 McBryde Street, Fawkner, the former Nufarm factory site that made a herbicide used in Agent Orange. Her comment, sent to council through PlanningAlerts.org.au, argues the proposed works could breach the clay cap sealing dioxin in the ground.

The application, reference MPS/2025/558 with Merri-bek City Council, seeks approval to use the land as a vehicle store and for buildings and works including a fence, on a site carrying both an Environmental Significance Overlay and a Significant Landscape Overlay. No applicant or developer is named on the public application listing, and the application remains undetermined. For builders and buyers eyeing capped industrial land in Melbourne’s north, it signals that even a low-intensity use like a vehicle store will face contamination scrutiny.

Why it matters

The site’s industrial history is the reason any works there draw scrutiny. Nufarm’s Fawkner factory produced 2,4,5-T, the herbicide component used in the Agent Orange defoliant deployed during the Vietnam War, and the site was never fully remediated after the plant closed. A clay cap was placed over residual dioxin contamination rather than removing it, according to Green Left’s reporting on a 2016 development bid for the same address.

That history has already produced one planning defeat on this land. Moreland City Council, the Fawkner area’s council before its 2022 renaming to Merri-bek, rejected an application for two warehouses at 102 McBryde Street in 2017, a decision that followed a sustained resident campaign over the integrity of the cap. The current vehicle store application is a separate, later filing on the same site, not a revival of that rejected scheme.

Page’s objection, lodged against the 2025 application, repeats the core concern from 2017: that any construction or ground disturbance could puncture the cap and expose or mobilise the dioxin beneath it. The public listing names no applicant.

The numbers

PlanningAlerts.org.au emailed 130 people subscribed to alerts for the area after the vehicle store application was listed, according to its public page. That page records a single public comment, Page’s, delivered to the council on 9 August 2026.

The application does not disclose a site area, a cost figure or a construction timeframe, and none is reported here. The only decided figure on the record for this address is the 2017 rejection of the earlier two-warehouse scheme, as reported by Green Left.

What’s next

The application sits with Merri-bek City Council for assessment, with no decision date disclosed on the public file. Under Victoria’s planning system, an objection does not itself block a permit. If the council refuses the application or fails to decide it in time, the applicant can apply to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for review. If the council grants a permit, an objector can seek review instead.

Fawkner’s dispute is not the only Melbourne contamination fight running into an approval. In Oakleigh South, the Victorian Government approved a rezoning for 1,100 homes on a former quarry and landfill site, over Monash Council’s own objections about ongoing contamination and geotechnical management. That outcome shows contamination concerns have not automatically stopped a Victorian planning decision elsewhere, though the McBryde Street application is still at the objection stage, well short of any determination.

No environmental audit, remediation plan or applicant identity has been disclosed for the current application, and none is estimated here. The next public marker will be Merri-bek’s determination, or a further round of submissions if the application is amended.