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Indicator Specification
Emissions of dangerous substances from local sources can have impacts on the quality of soil and water, particularly groundwater. Management of contaminated sites aims at assessing the adverse effects caused and taking measures to satisfy environmental standards according to current legal requirements.
No legal standards for soil quality have been set at the EU level but targets have been set by some EEA member countries. In general legislation aims at preventing new contamination and setting targets for the remediation of sites where environmental standards have already been exceeded.
The indicator tracks progress in the management of contaminated sites and the restriction of land use and use of ground/surface water, and in the provision of public and private money for remediation.
A number of activities causing soil pollution can be clearly identified across Europe. These relate, in particular, to losses during industrial activities and to waste disposal from municipal and industrial sources. However the range of polluting activities varies considerably from country to country. The variation may be the result of differing classification schemes or due to incomplete reporting.
The implementation of existing legislative and regulatory frameworks (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive, Landfill Directive, Water Framework Directive) should result in less new contamination of soil. However efforts are still needed to deal with historical contamination.
The indicator also shows the costs to society of the clean-up, the main activities responsible for soil contamination and the achievements managing the contaminated sites.
Main policy objective: to achieve a quality of the environment where the levels of man-made contaminants do not give rise to significant impacts or risks to human health.
Legal requirements for the protection of water quality exist at national as well as at EU level whereas for soil no legal standards have been implemented at EU level so far. They only exist in some of the EU countries. In general legislation aims at preventing new contamination and at the same time is setting targets for the re-establishment of already exceeded environmental standards by means of remediation activities.
In the future, implementation of the legislative and regulatory frameworks in place (Landfill Directive, Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive, Water Framework Directive) should result in fewer inputs of contaminants into soil that might give rise to severe contamination and in a better control of contamination caused by natural or other events.As a consequence, most of the efforts will be focused on historical contamination.
No European targets have yet been established. National targets exist in most EEA countries. This information was provided through the EIONET priority data flow 2003.
Country | Year | Policy or technical target |
---|---|---|
Austria | 2030-2040 | Essential part of the contaminated sites problem should be managed . |
Belgium (Flanders) | 2006 2021 2036 | Remediation of the most urgent historical contamination. New contamination to be remediated immediately. Remediation of urgent historical contamination. Remediation of other historical contamination causing risk. |
Bulgaria | 2003-2009 | Plan for implementation of Directive 1999/31/EC on Landfill of waste. |
Czech Republic | 2010 | Eliminate the majority of old ecological damage. |
France | 2005 | Establish information system on polluted soil (BASIAS) to provide a complete scope of the sites where soil pollution could be suspected. |
Hungary | 2050 | Handling of all sites. Government Decision No. 2205/1996 (VIII.24.) adopted National Environmental Remediation Programme (OKKP). |
Lithuania | 2009 | Waste disposal to all landfills not fulfilling special requirements should be stopped. All waste landfills not fulfilling special requirements should be closed according to approved regulations. |
Malta | 2004 | Closure of Maghtab and il-Qortin waste disposal sites. |
Netherlands | 2030 | All historical contaminated sites investigated and under control and remediated when necessary. |
Norway | 2005 | Environmental problems on sites with contaminated soil, where investigation and remediation is needed, shall be solved. On sites where further investigation is needed, the environmental state shall be clarified. |
Sweden | 2020 | Environmental quality objective: a non-toxic environment. |
Switzerland | 2025 | The "dirty" heritage of the past should be dealt with in a sustainable way within one generation. |
UK (England and Wales) | 2007 | At a political level, the Environment Agency aims to substantially remediate and/or investigate 80 Special Sites identified under Part IIA Regime (Environmental Protection Act 1990). |
Progress in management of local soil contamination in Europe: the data source identifies the number of sites at each management/processing steps. Data is aggregated considering those countries that provide a complete record for all the management steps. The projection to year 2050 is done on the basis of the annual increase rate calculated for the period 2001-2006. This rate is multiplied by the number of years from 2006 to 2025 (linear trend assumed) and the result is added to the figure of 2006.
Estimated allocation of public and private expenditures for site remediation. This information is directly provided by countries. The European figure is a weighted average based on those countries that provided data. The total annual management expenditure is used to whieght the percentage of public and private expenditures in each country.
Breakdown of local sources of soil contamination. Countries provide the data in terms of the percentage contributions of the specific sectors to the total number of sites. Percentages are weighted by the number of sites that have gone through site investiagation in order to obtain European shares.
Breakdown of industrial and commercial activities causing local soil contamination: the data are provided directly by countries in terms of the percentage contributions of the specific sectors to the total number of sites.
Expenditures on remediation of contaminated sites: raw data (in kEUR) are transformed in EUR per capita and as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product.
Status of completed risk reduction measures. Percentage of remediated sites: [Number of remediated sites]/[Estimated number of potentially polluting activites sites]*100. Percentage of sites where need for remediation measures is estimated: [Estimated number of contaminated sites][Estimated number of potentially polluting activites sites]*100.
Main contaminants affecting soil and groundwater. Contaminants are ranked taking into account the number of countries where the contaminant appears as first or second contaminant. Then a score is calulated: [Number of countries as first contaminant]*2 + [Number of cuntries as 2nd contaminant].
No methodology references available.
There is no commonly used definition for dealing with contaminated sites. Although a definition is introduced within this indicator, it might occur that various countries run their specific contaminated site management system in different ways and their management steps for example do not fit perfectly to that definition.
Aggregated data at European level is strongly influenced by the number of countries that provided data. Because existing data is not always avaiable for the same reference year, sometimes the figures presented on the indicator cover a time gap of 2 to 4 years.
The greater uncertainty is associated to estimates (e.g. estimated number of contaminated sites), usually based on expert judgement. This uncertainty increases with the projections to year 2025. In that case a linear trend has been assumed, representing probably the maximum that can be reached in that year.
Not sufficiently clear methodology and data specifications may have induced countries to interpret data specifications in different ways and therefore have provided information which may not be fully comparable. This problem has been progressively solved as better specifications have been introduced in the questionnaire. As a result quality of data has been improving.
Geographical and time coverage on EU level:
Representativeness of data on national level:
Comparability:
There is no common definition of contaminated sites agreed at the European level. This is expected to change in the future, as a common definition would probably be included in the soil thematic strategy.
Contaminated sites can be defined in several ways. One possible definition could be based on the exceedance of established limits in concentrations of hazardous chemicals. However, common limits are unlikely to be established at the European level since they may be strongly influenced by local soil and geological properties.
As a consequence, for this indicator, a working definition based on the concept of impact levels (see table below) has been adopted, in agreement with member countries. In particular, contaminated sites are sites where soil contamination poses significative negative effects on human health and ecosystems (levels 2 and 3), while potentially contaminated sites are sites where soil contamination is supected to pose significative negative effects on human health and ecosystems (site investigation has not been completed).
Level | Long Definition | Brief Definition |
Level 0 | Sites that do not pose any negative effects to human health or the environment; ' related environmental media can be used multi-functionally | no impacts; no restrictions |
Level 1 | Sites where related environmental media have tolerable contamination levels and which do not pose significant negative effects to human health or the environment, monitoring maybe necessary; ' related environmental media can be used multi-functionally | minor impacts (tolerable contamination); no restrictions; monitoring |
Level 2 | Sites that pose significant negative effects to human health or the environment if the use of the related environmental media changes to a more sensitive one, monitoring maybe necessary; ' limited use of related environmental media | no significant impacts under current use of environmental media, restricted use only |
Level 3 | Sites that pose significant negative effects to human health or the environment under current use of related environmental media; ' activities as regards risk reduction needed. | Significant impacts, activities needed |
The fact that there are no common agreed definitions provides an element of uncertainty in the assessment of the situation at the European level. To minimise this problem, the indicator focuses on the impacts of the contamination and provide information on progress in management, rather than focussing on the extension of the problem (e.g. number of contaminated sites).
Although several countries still present inconsistent definitions regarding site management steps, there has been a great improvement since the first data provided by countries.
Due to different management practices in place in the various countries, some of them might provide certain estimates in one year and come up with different estimates in the following years. This might depend on the status of completion of national inventories (e.g. at the beginning of registration not all sites are included, but after a more accurate screening the number of sites may increase). Therefore the information has to be intepreted and presented carefully, taking into account all the uncertainties, problems of data comparability and the specific aspects mentioned above.
Cost estimates of remediation are difficult to obtain, especially from the private sector. Therefore teh information provided is partial. However, the indicator shows that remediation is costly, even if only public expenditures are considered. Breakdown of cost estimates (investigation, remediation) improves data comparability across countries.
Work specified here requires to be completed within 1 year from now.
Work specified here will require more than 1 year (from now) to be completed.
A work plan with details on timing and resources is being prepared.
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/progress-in-management-of-contaminated-sites or scan the QR code.
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