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Middle East Technical University, Environmental Engineering Department, Ankara, Turkey
2 Ministry of Environment and Forest, Ankara, Turkey
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1. Background information on legislation and National Environmental Action Plan
Turkey’s environmental legislation stems from the 1982 Constitution. The
Environment Act is the major law concerning the environment. The Constitution states that citizens and the
Government are obliged to cooperate to protect and upgrade the environment. It also addresses the need to protect the shores, land and water resources, forests, and natural, historical and cultural assets.
The Environment Act (No 2872) of 1983 embodies the p olluter pays principle adopted by other countries, and sets forth the concept of absolute liability to enforce it. It also defines activities to prevent and solve environmental problems. Regulatory mechanisms defined in the Environment Act, are the primary tools for managing the environment. Regulations specify procedures to be followed, plans to be prepared, standards to be met, and activities to be prohibited. Also, enforcement powers are assigned to agencies, fines and other penalties are specified, and monitoring is promoted to ensure compliance. Few economic instruments are discussed, although, as mentioned above, the Act adopts a polluter pays principle and calls for appropriate economic and regulatory approaches.
The process of preparing a National Environmental Action Plan for Turkey start in early
1995, under the coordination of the State Planning Institution, with technical support of the
Ministry of Environment and financial contribution of the World Bank. Efforts have been made to ensure a widespread participation in the process of National Environmental Strategy and Action Plan preparation. For this purpose , representatives from public and private institutions as well as universities, non-governmental organizations, municipalities and occupational organizations have been invited to the work groups and subsequently to a chain of search and decision making conferences. Thus, attention has been paid for all parties to adapt the prepared action plan. National Environmental Action Plan was published in 1998.
The most important task in the execution of the National Environmental Action and Strategy
Plan has been undertaken by the Ministry of Environment. At this phase, establishing coordination among the concerned institutions in the projection and execution of the actions indicated by the National Environmental Plan and monitoring, the realization of practices within the framework of NEAP bears utmost importance.
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To attain long term environmental goals in our country , NEAP; (i) recommends a chain of attempts towards developing an efficient environmental management system; (ii) stresses the requirement to increase information and sensitivity with regard to the environment; (iii) brings up a chain of new investment proposals in miscellaneous fields ; (iv) constitutes the first steps towards adapting the environmental standards and regulations of EU at a rational speed.
Issues orientating the formulation of NEAP:
1-Strategical goals (prevention or reduction of pollution, elaboration of attainment to basic environmental substructures and services, encouragement of sustainable resource use, support of environmental practices and minimization of openness to environmental hazards.),
2- Guiding principles (democracy and participation, reconciliation and adaptation, productivity and economic rationality, coordination and acceptance of priorities, application and centralization of resolutions by descending to appropriate local levels).
The NEAP can make four additional contributions to national policy by: (a) serving as an input to the Eighth Development Plan; (b) being used as a building block for Turkey’s
National Agenda 21; (c) acting as the basis for discussion at the next biannual meeting of the
High Council for the Environment of the Ministry of Environment; and (d) helping to represent Turkey’s environmental outlook at upcoming regional and international arena.
2. Summary of soil pollution and other related legislation
There is a growing recognition of soil pollution and contaminated land problems in Turkey since the enforcement of such regulations as the Solid Wastes Control Regulation in March
1991 and the Hazardous Wastes Control Regulation in August 1995. The main purpose of these regulations is to provide a legal framework for the management of municipal solid wastes and hazardous wastes throughout the nation. They basically regulate the collection, transportation and disposal of wastes that can be harmful to human health and the
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environment and provide technical and administrative standards for construction and operation of disposal sites and related legal and punitive responsibilities.
The major regulation related to soil pollution in Turkey is the Soil Pollution Control
Regulation enacted in December 2001. This regulation is composed of five major sections.
Section one provides the objective, scope, legal foundation and definitions. Section two lists the obligations regarding the prevention of soil pollution. Section three describes the use of unprocessed and processed treatment sludge and compost on soil. Section four covers the principles and sanctions regarding encouragement, training and supervision. And finally, section five includes the items related to implementation of the regulation.
The objective of the Soil Pollution Control Regulation is stated as “to set out the principles of taking required measures in harmony with sustainable development targets, for the prevention of soil pollution as receptor media” (Official Gazette No: 24609, date: 10 December 2001).
The regulation comprises the technical and administrative principles, and legal sanctions related to such activities as discharge, disposal and leakage of hazardous substances and wastes causing soil pollution and as well as the use on soil of compost and treatment sludge originating from the treatment of domestic and industrial wastewaters having domestic waste standards. In this regard, limiting values (maximum concentration values) for various inorganic and organic soil pollutants used to define polluted soils, as well as maximum allowable metal contents of treatment sludge to be disposed of in agricultural lands are tabulated in the regulation.
Soil Pollution Control Regulation of Turkey with its current content has major conceptual deficiencies regarding the definition of soil pollution and contaminated sites. The regulation needs major revisions regarding its overall approach to the concepts of “soil pollution” and
“soil quality”. Some specific issues along this line will be discussed in the following sections.
Another regulation that is indirectly related to soil pollution and contaminated sites is the
Environmental Auditing Regulation enacted recently in January 2002. The objective of this regulation is, for the purpose of environmental protection, to regulate the methods and principles of environmental auditing of the facilities starting with their construction, and through operation, production phases and waste management practices. Basically, the regulation provide a legal and technical framework for the quality of work and procedures
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related to environmental auditing, responsibilities of the facility owners and jurisdictions of the auditing agencies. Facilities are subject to periodic internal and annual external auditing by the Ministry of Environment. Facilities are required to file regularly the facility-activity information forms starting from within 30 days of obtaining facility permits; maintain internal auditing programs, and related records, personnel and units; report the results of periodic internal environmental auditing to ensure compliance of the facility with the existing regulations; work with an accredited laboratory for chemical analyses and measurements necessary for auditing. Facility-activity information forms include general information
(facility name, location, etc); names, amounts and concentrations and sources of produced, consumed, and stored row-material and chemicals and produced wastes; reporting types and nature of industrial accidents experienced; and activities related to the solid waste, hazardous waste, hazardous chemicals, medical waste, environmental impact assessment, water pollution control and air quality control regulations.
Environmental Auditing Regulation is expected to help developing a systematic approach for identification and registration of the suspected and/or actual contaminated sites, as well as building and maintaining a complete inventory for the contaminated sites.
3. Inventory of Contaminated Sites
Currently, an inventory of contaminated sites in Turkey does not exist, mainly because none of the existing regulations neither define nor mention the concept of contaminated sites. For example, the most relevant regulation, Soil Pollution Control Regulation, does not explicitly define the concept of contaminated site; only provide an inadequate definition of soil pollution. Control of Hazardous Wastes Regulation , on the other hand, defines what a hazardous waste is and provides lists categorizing hazardous wastes based on their sources, chemical compositions and accepted disposal techniques. Thus, any site contaminated with or subjected to any of these categorized hazardous wastes can implicitly be defined as a contaminated site. However, difficulties arise from the lack of information for most of chemicals in these lists regarding specific maximum concentration levels (MCLs) or remedial action levels.
Currently, identification of any contaminated site is not based on a certain systematic regulatory approach. These sites are mostly identified after some potential environmental
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problems become obvious and public as a result of the efforts of local authorities or concerned citizens. However, some current policy developments by the Ministry of Environment can make the identification of contaminated sites somewhat more systematic. In this new policy development, the waste management commission, an administrative body proposed by the
Hazardous Wastes Control Regulation , initiates preparation of industrial facility inventory on a regional basis. Industrial facility inventory is planned to be achieved by requiring all the industry to fill out annual declaration forms revealing the type, amount, and composition of produced, consumed, and stored chemicals and wastes, and the current disposal practice of their wastes. This way, it is expected that waste generation activities and pollution potentials of industries can be monitored; regionally effective waste reutilization and recycling programs can be implemented; and finally regional needs for the type and capacity of waste disposal facilities can be identified. In response to such efforts, an integrated waste management facility, including a landfill and incineration unit for disposal of industrial wastes, has been operational at full scale for several years in heavily industrialized Marmara region. The data collected from the industrial facility inventory studies that can help for identifying the number of potential contaminated sites in Turkey are currently being processes by the Ministry of
Environment and the results are not yet available.
Similarly, Environmental Auditing Regulation is expected to provide data in time for identification and registration as well as maintaining a complete inventory for the contaminated sites by evaluating the facility-activity forms, which include information on types, amounts and concentrations and sources of produced, consumed, and stored rowmaterial and chemicals and produced wastes, types and nature of industrial accidents experienced, and activities related to the solid waste and hazardous waste regulations.
4. Concluding Remarks:
Although a reliable inventory of contaminated sites in Turkey does not exist, it is not difficult to guesstimate that the number of contaminated sites will not be small considering that the management of municipal and hazardous wastes in Turkey is inadequate to ensure proper handling and treatment. Industrial waste, particularly hazardous waste, has grown proportionately with industrial production. Treatment facilities are minimal and their disposal is usually haphazard. They pose serious dangers for soil and groundwater and in some cases for public health. It has been reported by the Ministry of Environment that presently out of a
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total of 3215 Municipalities only one-third of them uses sanitary landfilling, while the rest continues with wild dumping.
Turkey presently relies heavily on surface water resources to satisfy water supply demands mainly because of relative abundance of surface waters resources. Groundwater constitutes a relatively small component of total available resources, but it represents a significant portion of total water withdrawal. However, due to growing water demand parallel to rapid population and industrial growth, an increasing demand for food production, urban expansion and accelerated degradation of surface water quality, protection of clean groundwater resources as well as remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater sites are becoming environmental issues of high priority. The sustainable development of groundwater resources requires proper waste management for communities and industrial plants. With the spread of irrigation practices, the pollution threat to groundwater is also increasing. To date, unsatisfactory efforts have been made to protect groundwater from the increasing variety of potential pollution sources, such as agricultural chemicals, septic tanks, waste dumps, and contaminated sites.
The control of soil pollution is essential to Turkey’s on-going reliance on groundwater resources for potable water.
Although the legal gap has to a certain extent been filled with the currently available regulations, because the existing Soil Pollution Control Regulation has significant deficiencies and enforcement of other related regulations is relatively new, major issues related to soil pollution prevention and contaminated sites in Turkey remain unresolved. Recent regulatory efforts are considered to be a helpful first step toward the solution of existing problems but not sufficient. Soil Pollution Control Regulation requires a major revision to provide a proper framework for the prevention of soil pollution and proper identification, management and cleanup of contaminated sites. The revision at a minimum should focus on the following points:
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The purpose of the Soil Pollution Control Regulation should be redefined to include the protection or restoration of the functions of the soil on a permanent sustainable basis and the rehabilitation (remediation) of polluted soil, contaminated site and waters contaminated by such sites.
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The definitions of soil and soil pollution should be comprehensive enough to include not only the agricultural function of soils but also other functions, especially the hydrologic function.
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An explicit definition of contaminated sites should be provided so that identification, classification and remediation of such sites can be accomplished on scientific and systematic basis.
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A Soil Quality concept should be adopted and specific soil quality standards should be defined based on land use (recreational, residential, industrial, agricultural, etc.)
Also, the Soil Pollution Control Regulation should be supplemented with various technical guideline documentations related to soil screening (risk assessment), site characterization and available remedial technologies for contaminated sites.
As a result, Turkey is in need of developing a brand new and comprehensive national program on soil pollution control and prevention, and contaminated sites. This program should aim (i) to improve and strengthen the existing regulatory framework by making the necessary revisions in the existing ones and preparing the new ones in an integrated manner, (ii) to complete the national inventories for the development of a database system on soil pollution and contaminated sites, (iii) to develop a national soil quality monitoring system, a national diffuse pollution source strategy, and a classification and assessment system for ranking the priorities of remedial actions in contaminated sites, and (iv) to formulate financial funding mechanisms to support research and technology development/implementation for contaminated site remediation.
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