In order to facilitate the discussion of environmental issues associated with such a large and complex facility, the Sydney Steel Plant property has been divided into 36 Site Classification Units (SCUs) as shown in Figure 5-1. The derivation of these units is based on a number of factors:

• Historical land use and industrial processes
• Known or suspected environmental issues
• Locations of structures to be retained for reuse
• Adjacent land areas required to facilitate the reuse of structures
• Segregation of designated waste disposal areas.

The SCUs have been developed in cooperation with EDM Environmental Design and Management Limited. EDM has developed a strategy and master plan that can be used to guide future development of the Sydney Steel Plant property. The SCU system is employed in the EDM report to present environmental information, and to allow prospective tenants or developers to easily extract relevant environmental data. In this way, the SCUs serves as a basis for future reuse of the Former Sydney Steel Plant Lands, and a starting point for future environmental site assessment work.

Table 4-1 presents a chronology of the dominant land uses for each of the 36 SCUs. Historical building existence information is provided in Table D-1 in Appendix D, and historical building locations are shown in Figure 5-1.