Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 23.2
Soil policy
strategies (responses) for
contamination. Policies for
local sources aim at avoiding
pressures. For diffuse inputs
like agriculture the state of
soil should be kept in balance.
Contaminated land
management (CLM) aims at
restoring or reducing impacts
Contamination from local sources, as defined by the working group, corre-
sponds to activities where it is not necessary to put (contaminating) substances
into the soil. Oil tanks are not supposed to leak, properly designed waste dumps
do not need to have substantial emissions to groundwater and leaching from con-
struction materials can be reduced without affecting their functionality. Prevention
should aim to make it virtually impossible for emissions to occur, by containment
techniques or precautionary measures at industrial installations. This means that
there is no “acceptable emission of contaminants to soil” in these cases, only a
risk of failure of preventive devices, which should be “As Low As Reasonably
Achievable”. Soil is only used for geotechnical support or to provide space for these
activities.
On the other hand, activities like agriculture do address the soil as an ecosys-
tem. Agriculture modifies the ecological cycles of energy and matter to adjust them
to agricultural use. Sustainable agriculture is not possible without some input of
fertilisers. However, to keep the soil in good shape, accumulation of contaminants
must be avoided and the inputs must be balanced to the soil system with its normal
outputs without adversely affecting other parts of the environment.
For contaminated sites resulting from past industrial activities it is often impos-
sible to apply the “polluters pay principle”. In cases that the polluter cannot be
legally addressed, the owner of the site should be made responsible for manag-
ing and improving the situation, with adequately allocated financial support from
public funds. Management and remediation of contaminated sites can be based on
Risk Assessment and Risk Management approaches described in the reports of the
CARACAS (Ferguson and Kasamas
1999
; Ferguson et al.
1998
) and CLARINET
(Vegter et al.
2002
) concerted actions.
A preventive policy approach for the still ongoing large scale diffuse contamina-
tion by atmospheric deposition and, in the case of sediments, water contamination,
requires large scale integration of soil protection, air and water policies and land
use policies. The European Water Framework Directive (
2000
) provides opportuni-
ties for management of water quality and quantity at the river basin scale and may
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