Sustainability and Remediation - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 899

the use of all stakeholder groups.” 5 However, all three have an important bearing on
contaminated land management, and the determination of past and future liabilities.
A common theme for all three types of control is need for the preservation of
documentation, and a major concern raised for “fit for purpose” remediation for
some jurisdictions is whether public record keeping and contractual record keeping
by institutions is adequate. Another issue is related to the preservation of informa-
tion about sites; as information availability may be a large influence in determining
liabilities.
Institutional controls also have a bearing in sustainable development, as already
discussed in 2002 in CLARINET's Risk Based Land Management Concept (Vegter
et al. 2002 ). It may be more appropriate to affect a limitation in land use access
and activity to allow a lower input approach to remediation in the short term, and
accept that a land use change will require further Risk Management. This provides
an alternative land use rationale to the use of a multi-functional approach. A partial
reason for some sites might be the hope of better and more effective remediation
approaches in the future for particularly difficult contamination problems. However,
a contingent part of this rationale is the ability to preserve information into the
future for long periods, effectively over future generations. In the Netherlands and
UK national organisations have been set up for the long term care of Brownfield
sites and for the Netherlands for sites with residual contamination after remediation,
in return for an initial payment. This is then invested and pays for ongoing site
maintenance. 6
20.2.3 Sustainable Remediation
Sustainable remediation has come to exist as a popular term used to describe
contaminated site management that is demonstrably sustainable, i.e. where some
form of sustainability appraisal has been used in decision making to identify the
“most sustainable” approach for any particular management intervention required.
The “most sustainable” approach is one that, in the view of the stakehold-
ers involved in making or considering management decisions, has the optimal
balance of effects and benefits for each of the three elements of sustainabil-
ity: environment, economy and society. A number of international and national
initiatives are developing “sustainable remediation” concepts and their provi-
sional definitions are summarised in Table 20.3 . These initiatives are described in
Section 20.2.4 .
Remediation is a process that takes place after a chain of decisions that set its
scope . Very often the remediation work is part of a larger initiative, for example
the redevelopment of a former industrial site, which will include a wide range
of other decisions related to feasibility of developing a site and financing the
5 http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/tools/tti_lucs.htm
6 www.landrestorationtrust.org.uk