Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
effort in obtaining information about the site. It is quite easy to state that “no infor-
mation has been found” as checking if that information is indeed not available would
imply that at least part of the Preliminary Investigation has to be performed again.
Consequently, there is a tendency in a competitive market to limit the effort that
is put into the Preliminary Investigation. Two potential mechanisms are important
to ensure the quality of the Preliminary Investigation, i.e. detailed instructions on
the activities the investigator has to perform (1) and quality control through, for
example, certification of the investigator (2). The combination of these two instru-
ments, a standard with a detailed technical description and a certification scheme, at
least provides a mechanism of quality control for the Preliminary Investigation. An
additional control instrument is the obligation to publish a transparent report on the
Preliminary Investigation.
The report of the Preliminary Investigation must contain both factual information
as well as interpreted information. Examples of factual information are:
Old maps, showing the location of specific buildings and the boundaries of the
site.
Old photos of the site.
Registrations of interviews with former employees (although the information
provided is per definition an interpretation of the person interviewed).
In short, the factual information is all information as obtained during the
Preliminary Investigation. It is important to include the factual information in the
report of the Preliminary Investigation, as through this route the information is still
available, even if another investigator or other consultancy firm takes over the inves-
tigation of the site. Repetitive misinterpretations of the information can be prevented
by providing the factual information in the report.
Interpreted information relates to that part of the report in which the investigator,
based on the obtained factual information, describes what to his opinion might have
happened on the site and what the consequences thereof are for the soil quality. In
fact, this interpretation provides the first conceptual model of the contamination.
In order to provide guidance to the investigator, national and international stan-
dards for the performance of the Preliminary Investigation use a limited number of
hypotheses for the description of the spatial distribution of the contamination. A, to
some degree layered, approach is used where a distinction between sites at first is
based on:
No contamination.
Contamination.
As a secondary assumption, for the contaminated sites a distinction is made
between:
Local soil contamination.
Diffuse soil contamination.
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