Bringing Sustainable Management of Contaminated Sites into Practice – The Role of Policy and Regulations - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 1047

different from the types of land uses known today. For instance, it may be necessary
to consider whether land use related remediation, particularly when based on control
of the pathway or receptor, may prevent future use of sites for underground building
and infrastructure.
23.7.6.2 Decision-Making
These uncertainties translate into site management problems, both with regard to
environment and to spatial planning. However, managing scientific uncertainty is
not a new concept. One of the most important political choices concerning decision
making in uncertain situations is the degree of conservatism of precaution. There
are two extreme positions:
(1) to set very stringent and highly precautionary requirements (building in very
conservative safety factors to allow for unknown scientific developments) or
(2) to take a laissez faire attitude to assessing the risk (assuming that problems
caused by lack of action today will be dealt with by the society of tomorrow, as
today's society has to deal with yesterday's legacy)
Most contaminated sites management approaches fall between both extremes
described above.
To put policy into practice, one must also make choices between simple decision
support tools or more sophisticated ones. Decision support tools like generic reme-
diation objectives (standard values for concentrations of contaminants) for instance
are easy to apply, but many stakeholders feel that the use of generic soil quality
standards leads to arbitrary decision-making. Generic soil quality standards do not
reflect the site-specific risk of contamination in most cases. On the other hand, intro-
ducing time-consuming, costly and complex site-specific procedures that do not
easily allow decisions when factors are unknown for even the most simple con-
taminated site problem, is not very expedient. In general some intermediate tool
between the two extremes described above would be adequate.
23.7.7 Other Management Constraints and Influences
Whatever the outcome of the theoretical analysis of the components of RBLM
is, there are other external factors influencing its application in practice. One set
of factors relates to the decision-making process. Who decides and how do they
decide? Will it be a dynamic and open decision-making process, involving all inter-
est groups, or can a single decision-maker apply a protocol or a mandatory decision
support system?
The conceptual idea of a “manager” in the RBLM approach does not auto-
matically imply that there is a single decision-maker. The “manager” may be the
competent national, regional or municipal authority. These authorities will have
to act within their mandate to represent public interest. For industrial sites, the