Regional councils will not be testing thousands of sites that may contain toxic chemicals.
Eight out of 17 councils have now made their lists public, with Southland, Waikato and Wellington Regional Councils doing so on Monday.
Sites used for hazardous activities such as orcharding, landfill, timber treatment and petrol storage are listed because their soil may carry toxic chemicals.
The Waikato list is one of the largest with almost 4600 suspected sites.
Radio New Zealand's environment reporter says it includes at least 95 with confirmed contamination, but in thousands of other cases, not even the reported polluting activity has been confirmed.
The Southland list has details about 172 sites. Wellington is further ahead, having been through all but 14 of its unverified sites.
However, WRC says it won't be testing hundreds of residential backyards that could contain heavy metals or pesticide residuals.
One company which does such soil testing is Hill Laboratories.
Manager Graeme Corban, says there has been a steady stream of work since toxic chemicals were found three years ago in the soil of at least nine pre-schools in Waikato and Auckland.
He says it's a simple process to test for the most common toxics like arsenic, copper and pesticides like DDT used on old orchard blocks.
Auckland Regional Council says it does not hold any list to issue: just a register of 200 resource consents issued because of contamination.
The council says it's looking at making its register available on-line, but won't be listing places where toxic activities took place until much later.
