A Stakeholder’s Perspective on Contaminated Land Management - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 1070

This can result in dual regulation problems of applying waste legislation and
risk-based contaminated sites legislation to the same activity. Hopefully, after years
of concerted effort we are moving closer towards resolution in this area.
One consequence of having a redevelopment-market-led approach to industrial
site remediation is that a downturn in the construction sector, which the UK entered
in the last quarter of 2007, could have significant consequences for the UK remedia-
tion sector. This, at a time when Environmental Liability transfer is becoming a key
driver in the divestment of land, will make remediation of industrially contaminated
sites even more challenging in the future.
Procedures for dealing with Brownfields are described in detail in Nathanail
( Chapter 25 of this topic).
24.10 A Sustainable Future?
24.10.1 Sustainable Approaches
The main challenge for the future is to ensure that management of contaminated
sites, like that of any other complex issue faced by our society, fits within a
framework of sustainability . Ensuring that activities undertaken today will not be
detrimental to environmental quality in the future, nor will they restrict activities in
the future, is an increasingly important political technical and practical issue.
NICOLE has held three workshops, in 2003, 2008 and 2009 to discuss sus-
tainable approaches to remediation with representatives from industry, service
providers, researchers and regulators to explore the opportunities, challenges and
barriers posed by sustainable site management. It was clear in 2003 that the mean-
ings ascribed to terms such as “sustainable” or “sustainable development” varied
widely; nonetheless many governments and companies have meanwhile included
“sustainability” in their policies and guidelines. Since 2003 a number of initia-
tives have been established to find consensus based approaches to considering
sustainability in remediation in Europe, North America and Australia. Sustainable
remediation is discussed in detail in Chapter 20 by Bardos et al., this topic. This is to
be expected today when issues such as world-wide urban pressures, water supplies,
and climate change are key focuses across the political, social, economic and envi-
ronmental sectors. These aim to define what “sustainable remediation” really means,
in terms of what it describes and how the sustainable remediation projects will be
implemented. The aim of NICOLE is to push this theory into practice. NICOLE
members are professionals in the remediation sector and are subsequently very
active in the on-going sustainable remediation debate. In 2008 NICOLE initiated
a sustainable remediation working group (SRWG).
This group is defining what sustainable remediation principles actually mean,
what tools are available, and importantly, which projects are really feasible. The
SRWG is organised into several subgroups; case studies, economics, communica-
tion, Risk Assessment, sustainability and key performance indicators. These cover