It's at the end of a suburban street, in a spot between a muddy cul-de-sac and the banks of the Werribee River, that bubbles spew out of a hard-to-see drain.
They go unnoticed by a Bacchus Marsh resident as he walks past kicking a ball, but for inspectors from Victoria's Environment Protection Authority, they're a cause for concern.
"What we have observed is some water bubbling out … what looks like a detergent material," explains chief executive Lee Miezis, who has travelled the 60 kilometres north-west of Melbourne to be here with his team.
"We have the water meter out, which will give us an indication of what is in the water and now we are taking a sample, so we'll be able to test that properly," he says, as an inspector pulls out gadgets and containers from a large case.
The inspectors will be working as drain detectives, tracing the pollution back to its point of origin.
"We know this is a drain that is connected up into the industrial estates, but we can't just make assumptions about where it has come from," Mr Miezis explains.
"Our officers on the ground are really trained at tracing pollutants back up the system."
A mission to protect local rivers
The EPA had a team in Bacchus Marsh for days last week, running unannounced checks on 30 industrial businesses — everything from mechanics to panel beaters to manufacturing sites.
About 2 kilometres from the Werribee River, the inspectors file into an industrial business.
They are there to check how it is storing any liquid chemicals and protecting storm water drains from run off.
Mr Miezis has a simple philosophy when it comes to drains – he reckons only rainwater should be flowing through them.
"Anything else, whether it is soap or coolant, it ultimately gets from our stormwater drains into our river system and can have pretty catastrophic impact on the local ecology, fish, plants and our enjoyment as people of these waterways," he says.
While drains aren't a very sexy topic of conversation, and largely go unnoticed by most of us, the EPA knows they can also pose a significant risk to our waterways.
They are, after all, what links our industrial estates to our rivers and waterways.
Here in Bacchus Marsh, the industrial blitz is designed to protect two local rivers.
"We are focused very much on the Werribee River, but also on the Lerderderg River here in Bacchus Marsh," Mr Miezis says.
Standing along the top of a steep bank down to the Werribee River, he can see where pollution and litter ends up.
"People might think, 'gee we are a fair way from the river we, are not going to have an impact', but you know our drains are interconnected and anything that gets down there [in drains], there is a high risk this is where it ends up," he says.
Inspecting industrial businesses across the state
This isn't the only river system the EPA is trying to protect with its industrial inspection blitz.
So far, it has had inspectors at more than 130 businesses across Victoria, with the aim to get to more than 200 businesses by the end of this round of inspections.
Officers have issued about 200 pieces of 'compliance advice' as well as 16 breach notices to businesses needing to do more to meet their environmental obligations.
The breach notices cover a wide range of issues, including one business which was given a notice for causing a pollution event from liquid waste, while other businesses were reported for failure to prevent runoff into stormwater, failure to contain wash water and failures to properly store or handle chemicals or waste.
The inspectors have concentrated their efforts on the west and north of Melbourne, as well as the Latrobe Valley, Wodonga and Bendigo, where they hope to protect smaller creeks that flow through industrial areas and into larger rivers and, in some cases, into Port Phillip Bay.
Regulator trying to prevent another spill like Cherry Lake
The EPA's focus on industrial businesses comes after a major chemical spill in Melbourne's west earlier this year, which spread via storm water drains.
The spill started at a Melbourne Transport and Warehousing site in Laverton in March of this year after a fire. Authorities believe about 12,000 litres of chemicals were spilt from a site which was storing agricultural fertilisers.
The chemicals made their way into the nearby Cherry Creek from stormwater drains. From there, the pollution flowed into Cherry Lake in Altona, which is a large recreational lake in the city's south-west. The pollution is then believed to have flowed all the way to the entrance of Port Phillip Bay.
That spill is still being investigated by the EPA the company issued a statement earlier this year expressing its deep concern over the event.
"I think Cherry Creek and the Cherry Lake incident really evidences the problem that can happen if runoff into drainage isn't properly managed," Mr Miezis says.
"We had hundreds of tonnes of fish killed, large impact on the local community who recreate around that site, and a pretty expensive clean-up bill."
It's a story the EPA wants to make sure isn't replicated.
After 'disaster' in the west, environmentalists hope for tougher regulation of businesses
Colleen Hartland is a familiar face in Melbourne's west – she's lived in the Footscray area for 40 years and has a long involvement in the environmental movement.
The former Victorian Greens MP now chairs the Anti-Toxic Waste Alliance – an organisation which brings together about 20 different community groups and unions.
She is critical of industrial businesses which don't do enough to protect natural environments but she is also critical of the regulator – the EPA.
She says the EPA's communication with the Altona community was poor after the Cherry Lake spill.
"It was really visible that something terrible had happened and people didn't feel like they were getting information, they weren't being contacted and I think the sight of the dead fish really frightened people," she remembers.
"I came down here when the EPA did do a pop-up meeting – the signage was poor, it was only in English, they hadn't done anything to contact community leaders who would then be able to disperse the information out to others."
She worries pollution events are not taken as seriously by the public in Melbourne's western suburbs because of an attitude "that they are not nice areas so they don't really count".
Ms Hartland says with increasingly large populations living near heavy industry, it's important more is done to ensure chemical spills don't occur.
She is supportive of the EPA's inspection blitz, but says these checks need to be ongoing and she wants the EPA to have "more respectful" communication with local communities.
For heavy industry, she says, its important there is an understanding of the importance of being "good corporate neighbours" and protecting surrounding residential areas.
Back in Bacchus Marsh, Lee Miezis says the EPA did learn from the Altona chemical spill "that you can't communicate enough", but he is proud of the work the authority did sharing information on social media, running pop-up information sessions and getting scientists down to speak to the community.
What he hopes is to see a shift from businesses towards a focus on preventing chemical spills.
"A lot of businesses have good emergency management plans in place, so if a spill occurs they can respond pretty quickly," he says.
"[But] that is not enough, you need to have the systems in place that stop the spill from occurring in the first place."
He hopes that's a message flowing through to business operators.
