EIONET-soil_Ad-hoc_1st meeting_paper_CF-BE(Wall)_final(23/02/2015)
INVENTORIES & CSI015 INDICATOR « PROGRESS IN MANAGEMENT OF
CONTAMINATED SITES » : COMMON FORUM FEEDBACK & CASE STUDY IN
WALLONIA (BELGIUM)
Esther Goidts1 – Sophie Capus2 – Dominique Darmendrail3 – Maxime Semer1 – Arnaud Warin1
1
Soil Protection Direction, DGARNE (DG Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment), SPW (Public
Administration of Wallonia), Belgium
2
Contaminated Sites Service, Waste Division, Environmental Administration, Sustainable Development &
Infrastructure Ministry, Luxembourg
3
Common Forum General Secretary C/O BRGM, France
KEYWORDS
Inventories, (potentially) contaminated sites, databases, mapping, CSI015 indicator, Common Forum, Wallonia
ABSTRACT
Although contaminated site management is widely applied in EU member states, different approaches were
developed since the beginning of the 90s and are used for establishing and updating inventories or registers of
(potentially) contaminated sites and for site investigation. At the EU level, CSI015 indicator „Progress in
management of contaminated sites“ has been defined by European Environment Agency in order to monitor the
status and the progress of such management. However, comparison of CSI015 indicators between countries is
still difficult due to low plausibility of data (mainly from terminology issues and definition of management
steps) or absence of data for 33 to 50% of countries (see Table 1).
Tab. 1 CSI015 indicator „Progress in management of contaminated sites“
Topic
CSI015 indicator
Plausibility
1. Management of CS
n sites preliminary study (estimated / identified)
Very low but many data
n sites preliminary investigation (total / completed)
n sites main investigation (total / completed)
n sites measures (total / completed)
n PCS currently estimated / additional
n CS
2. Contribution
activities
to
contamination
% of each defined category (15) and sub-categories
contributing to soil contamination
No data for ~33% MS
3. Environmental impact
n CS for each category of pollutants (8) for solid and
liquid matrixes
No data for ~33% MS
4. Expenditures
Annual expenditures for site investigation / remediation /
after-care / redevelopment
Low - no data for ~33%
MS
Budget still needed for contamination management
No data for ~33% MS
% sites in each cost-category
No data for 50% MS
% CS for each category of risk receptors (6)
No data for ~50% MS
% site investigation for each media category (12)
No data for ~40% MS
% sites with risk reduction measures applied for each
category of measures (12)
No data for ~50% MS
5. Remediation
technologies
of polluting
local
soil
priorities
and
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Common Forum feedback
Common Forum on contaminated land in European Union (CF), an informal network of regulators and policymakers from European environmental administrations and agencies, has initiated a discussion on this topic
through a questionnaire addressed to its members (identification of registers/inventory types in each country,
meening of the management step identified in CSI015 indicator). Results were that 9 different types of
inventories and registers were identified in CF participant countries:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Sites where potentially polluting activities have taken place or are taking place
Potentially polluted sites
Sites where soil assessment has been performed
Polluted sites (pollutant concentration > threshold value)
Contaminated sites (pollutant concentration > risk value; site needs urgent intervention)
Remediated sites
Sites that need aftercare
Accident sites
Sites that are not polluted
The main conclusions of the exercise operated within the network were:
- All of the identified register types exist somewhere but having no register at all can also be an option;
- in general, a country has more than one inventory (e.g. one on potentially contaminated sites or sites on
which polluting activities have taken place and one on contaminated sites or sites needing actions, one on
remediated sites). A national / regional register can be used for several inventories to keep track of the
different situations and undertaken actions.
- There are also different ways to classify the sites in the different countries due to the context of the
creation of these inventories and registers in relation with their objectives assigned in the national /
regional legal frameworks ;
- Contents of inventories present a great variety throughout Europe due to their creation context ;
- Each inventory has to be understood in its context;
- Inventories are a very important management and policy making tool, but results or statistics of different
inventories are not comparable;
- When remediated sites are removed from an inventory they still appear in another one.
While those national / regional inventories are used for answering to the EEA / JRC CIS015 indicator, they do
not necessarily give a direct answer to the indicator questionnaire: some national classifications do not allow
tracking which sites have been remediated and which sites where found clean at the first assessment. Some
inventories are limited to a specific type of sites (e.g. only historical or only sites to be remediated by public
authority). The level of detail for potentially contaminated sites can be very different throughout Europe and the
definition of a « site » might vary a lot (former installation, contour of pollution or cadastral parcel, …). Finally,
the comparison between MS using different threshold values seems not appropriate.
The elaboration and the update of the existing inventories and registers by the Member States have requested
and are mobilising important financial efforts. Consequences of requesting amending / adapting / harmonising
the existing tools should be carefully assessed in order to avoid additional financial burdens.
Some clarifications are needed on the following issues:
-
-
-
Definition of site (area or point, one or several cadastral parcels, which perimeter, in particular for
the former/ historical sites),
Definitions of pollution vs. contamination (differences observed between countries, between
countries and the indicator): o Some countries make a distinction between pollution and
contamination, others no.
Definitions of potentially contaminated sites and contaminated sites (with differences in the way to
assess the pollution status, by generic risk assessment - i.e. thresholds, or site specific risk
assessment - i.e. risk values),
Steps of management proposed in the indicator,which are not fully in line with the practices by
Member States (e.g. identification different from mapping, preliminary study including soil
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investigations while for most of the MS it’s only a desk study, risk assessment included in the
main investigation step, risk management vs. risk reduction measures)
Case study of Wallonia
When refering to table 1, Wallonia would lie in the category of having many data regarding topic 1, 2, 3 and 5
but not organised at all to answer to CSI015 indicator (and with an important step of numerisation from paper
needed) and low data for topic 4. Although the analyse of the available different databases allows to regularly
report on the number of (potentially) polluted sites in Wallonia (see Table 2), important efforts of databases
gathering, georeferencing, and cleaning is needed in order to have an integrated mapping of such sites so that
geographical redundancy no longer lies behind the number of sites concerned.
Tab. 2 Number of (potentially) contaminated sites according to the different available databases (from ICEW, 2013)
Legal framework / Driver
Starting date
of database
Potentially
Contaminated Remediated
contaminated
low
high
low
High
estimate estimate estimate estimate
n sites
Soil decree
5/12/2008
422
Environmental permit decree
11/3/1999
7391
7391
7391
4/3/1999
1905
1905
1156
Protection at work – gas stations
Waste decree
Economic wasteland (brownfields
included) within land planning decree
Historical studies (Vandermaelen map –
CHST 2012)
Total
1985 26/6/1996
1978 27/11/1997
1846 - 1854
422 132
132
290
9
7391
?
?
514
514
1000
391
1156
187
187
345
624
1897
4147
1342
3592
203
352
5694
5694
5694
5694
?
?
18.465
20.715
15.260
17.510
1838
1376
Indeed, prior to the year 2000, the databases were only used for basic administrative management within
separated legal framework and without mapping considerations (only the site address was recorded with
possibly a local map). The mapping work which allows to proceed an integrated approach for soil management
(including both prevention and remediation levels) and allows to systematically identify potential duplicates
between databases, based on the use of a consistent spatial reference, is currently under finalisation in Wallonia.
The method and data used to develop the reference centralised database on soil status for Wallonia (ie. BDES)
will be presented, as well as their associated estimated needed costs and time.
Fig. 1 Window of the reference centralised database on soil status for Wallonia (ie. BDES)
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LITERATURE
Common Forum (2013), Meeting report 29 & 31 May 2013 – Bratislava/ Republic of Slovakia (2013.054)
European Union/JRC (2014), Progress in the management of contaminated sites in Europe, Report EUR 26376 EN
ICEW (Key Environmental Indicators for Wallonia), 2013: Fiche Pollution locale des sols – DEE – DEMNA– DGARNE –
SPW;
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