Sustainability and Remediation - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 941

regulators, or may not meet particular statutory goals. However, these methods may
still achieve practical Risk Management. Perhaps a particular generic limit value
may be overly conservative for a particular site. Indeed, in some cases it may well
be argued that a mass removal-based remedial objective is a poor result for the envi-
ronment, because the energy and diesel consumption, green house gas emissions
and traffic risks may be far worse than the presence of immobile contaminant in the
subsoil. What is needed is a more flexible and adaptive approach to remediation and
Risk Management that is focussed on the sustainable reduction of risks rather than
the achievement of particular threshold values.

20.6.3 Technological Innovation by Combining State
of the Art Techniques

There may be major technological advances that change the way remediation is car-
ried out in the future. However, in the short term is also a large potential to improve
sustainability using existing technologies. A wide range of sustainable remediation
opportunities can be created by applying and combining existing state of the art tech-
niques that are not necessarily from the field of remediation. In particular, important
steps forward will be possible through intelligent design and synergy, as illustrated
in the case studies, for example:

• technologies, like solar or wind energy for energy consuming remediation

techniques;

• groundwater energy systems and groundwater remediation;

• multiple subsurface use, subsurface building and contaminant removal or con-

taminant immobilisation or contaminant isolation;

• nature restoration, management and policy development.

The applicability and benefits are generally site-specific. In most cases reme-
diation will put a burden on the environment, for example relating to the inputs
needed to install the system. These burdens need to be balanced against the benefits
delivered by the remediation.

20.6.4 Synergies: Go with the Flow

The importance of the climate change and sustainability debate may be an oppor-
tunity for enabling renewed interest and investment in remediation where useful
synergies between remediation and other forms of sustainable development such as
renewable energy can be exploited. An emerging area of interest across Europe and
the USA is the use of Brownfield sites for renewable energy production, for exam-
ple thorough the cultivation of biomass (Bardos et al. 2009 ). Of particular interest
in the Netherlands is the synergy between groundwater energy management and
groundwater remediation.