Before you apply to councils for a town planning or building permit, you must find out if your property is near or within any Melbourne Water easements or assets – such as drains, sewers or water mains.
If we have assets near your property, you’ll need detailed information on their location before you apply for our approval to build near them.
Doing this early means you’re more likely to avoid damaging our assets, which can cause widespread community disruption and have major implications on your development and safety. Take a look at this video for more about the 'why':
How do I proceed?
There are two steps:
- Check if there are any Melbourne Water assets near your property
- Get detailed information on their location
Check if our assets are near your property
Contact Dial Before You Dig to find out if any Melbourne Water assets are near your property. This quick, free service liaises with us (and other services like gas and telecommunications providers) to give you an approximate location of all underground assets in your area of works.
To lodge your free enquiry:
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call 1100
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visit Dial Before You Dig
If we have no assets near your property, we don’t need any further information from you. However, if your building surveyor needs our written confirmation of this, you’ll still need to apply for our approval.
Locate the assets
If we do have assets near your property, you’ll need more detailed location information before you can apply to build near or over them.
To obtain these details, please email [email protected] and request the information for the asset near your property. We’ll send you the most detailed information we have available – usually ‘design’ plans.
Once you’ve added this information to your proposed development plans – and shown that you’ve met our setback and clearance requirements – you can apply to build over our assets or easements.
Note: We may sometimes need further details (‘as constructed’ plans) before we can approve your works. If this is the case, we’ll advise you when we process your application, as you’ll need a licensed surveyor to prove the asset location.