Europe’s Proposed Soil Legislation
By Paul Nathanail

In 2002, the European Commission (EC) recognized that soil is as essential to mankind and ecosystems as air and water. But in many areas of Europe, soil is being degraded or irreversibly lost — in one member state at a rate of one square meter a second. Soil is threatened by erosion, loss of biodiversity, sealing and contamination.

There is currently no specific European Union policy on soil. The summer 2005 EC consultation on a proposed soil directive that would include contamination provisions could mirror or unravel the provisions of the U.K.’s Part IIA and other contaminated land related legislation. Fortunately the concept of contaminated land being considered is risk-based and recognizes the concept of fit for use enshrined in U.K. and other E.U. member state legislation. 

The approach currently built in to the commission’s proposal involves considering soil issues on the basis of “working units,” which for contamination would be at the national or regional scale. There would be a risk-based definition of contamination posing risks to human health and the environment, taking into account current and intended land uses, which resonates with the Part IIA definition.

An inventory of contaminated sites would be required from each member state, along with a national remediation plan for such sites. Land status reports would be required from sellers for buyers of sites where potentially contaminative activity had taken place.
The commission recognizes the need for a mechanism to fund remediation of orphan sites — roughly defined as those sites for which a polluter cannot be found. There is growing pressure for a harmonized risk assessment methodology — but one that recognizes national and physical variation across Europe. This begs the question from a U.K. perspective: Isn’t that what we have now?

Ironically, although there is widespread agreement that pollution prevention should be a high priority, modifying the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) directive to protect soil is only being proposed at some later and unspecified date. This would introduce a requirement to harmonize the procedures for cessation of the permitted activity and the return of land to a “satisfactory state” and require monitoring of the soil during the permitted activity. BFN

Paul Nathanail is with the University of Nottingham and is a member of the CABERNET Coordination Team (CABERNET is Europe’s sustainable brownfield regeneration network).