Introduction to Contaminated Site Management - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 6

produced for public or industrial use, or produced as a by-product, and eventually
entered the environment and the soil.
The early examples of contaminated sites mainly resulted from delocalisation of
contaminants, that is, metals in metal ores and crude oil from deeper soil layers to
the upper soil layer. In the 20th century, however, an enormous variety of organic
compounds, along with metal organic complexes, were produced out of existing less
harmful compounds. Moreover, the soil was often intentionally used as a sink, for
example, by primitive land filling or the release of contaminant holding fluids into
the soil. Up to the 1970s, it was often believed that, very much like dumping waste
water in a kitchen sink, superfluous materials simply disappeared towards some
unknown destination where it was out of sight and, probably, would do no harm. A
slightly more sophisticated approach towards the dumping of contaminant-holding
materials was based on the belief that the soil-groundwater system was able 'to
handle the burden', either by incorporating the contaminants in some kind of phys-
ical, chemical or biological cycling process, or simply by dilution. Although this
latter approach included some arguments that we use in modern Risk Management
procedures in regard to contaminated site management today, the power of the soil
to 'clean' itself was far from being able to counterbalance the increasing contami-
nant load. Given the cost ratio between prevention measures and soil remediation,
these approaches of dealing with contaminants must, in retrospect, be classified as
immensely naive.
1.1.1.2 Public and Political Awareness
In the early 1970s, some soil protection-related policies came into existence in
several countries. However, it was not until the late 1970s that several notorious
cases of contaminated sites led to a sudden awareness among the general public and
served as a loud alarm to decision makers. Those cases where contractors, generally
without any bad intentions, had created situations in which humans came in close
contact with notorious (carcinogenic!) contaminants in soil could especially count
on intensive media attention.
In 1978 the Love Canal disaster became a national media event in the USA
(Levine 1982 ). At the site of Love Canal, a neighbourhood near Niagara Falls in
upper New York State, USA, a school and a number of residences had been built
on a former landfill for chemical waste disposal, and thus sat directly on the dump
site of thousands of tons of dangerous chemical wastes. The US Environmental
Protection Agency (US EPA) discovered and reported on a disturbingly high rate
of health afflictions for the residents, such as miscarriages and birth defects (Beck
1979 ). Although it was difficult to conclusively prove that the contaminants in the
soil were the cause, recurring illnesses of the inhabitants and school employees were
connected with the history of the site. In 1980, a state of emergency was declared
and 700 families were evacuated.
In Europe in 1979, the site of Lekkerkerk in the Netherlands became an infamous
national event. Again, a residential area had been built on a former waste dump
which included chemical waste from the painting industry. Moreover, to prepare the