News

This review has been undertaken by Dan Corry. It is worth taking a closer look at Recommendation 13, which states: "The work to update the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 to allow regulators more flexibility to take sensible, risk-based decisions should be accelerated because it is particularly important in supporting net-zero and circular economy priorities, for example facilitating the development of low carbon industrial infrastructure, and for ensuring remediated soil is not unnecessarily categorised as waste."

Read the full report at gov.uk

The UK Government imposes a statutory duty on local authorities to inspect potentially contaminated sites, but in the majority of cases this is not being done, reportedly due to lack of funds.

Read the full article on the BBC news website

Read the perspective of two atmospheric scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Leeds on this Netflix drama, published in The Conversation France (in English).

To quote the authors: "With the UK no longer following EU environmental standards and the US rolling back key pollution regulations and scaling down environmental enforcement, the issues at the heart of Toxic Town feel more urgent than ever."

The series itself is likely a rather controversial retelling from the perspective of many land contamination practitioners.

Read the full article in The Conversation.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) of the UK Government has recently updated the following:

• Green Belt guidance
• Effective use of land guidance
• Brownfield development guidance

• Government response to the proposed plan-making reforms: consultation on implementation
• The Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment etc.) (England) Regulations 2025 - Draft

A concise summary is available in an Irwin Mitchell LLP round up.

EUSO has launched the EU Soil Strategy Actions Tracker. This new tool tracks the progress of policy actions listed in the EU Soil Strategy for 2030.

• The EU Soil Strategy Actions Tracker contains detailed information on each action, including due date, recent updates, links to related EU policies and links to relevant sources.
• The Tracker shows that currently 62 out of 90 actions (almost 70%) are completed; 24 actions (almost 30%) are still in progress.

The Soil Strategy Actions Tracker is developed by the EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) of the Joint Research Centre, in cooperation with the Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV). It will be extended to monitor all EU policy actions relevant to soils and is thus a rolling assessment of progress on formal policy commitments on soil.

The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) is a research and knowledge exchange service based in the UK Parliament. It works to ensure that the best available research evidence and information is brought to bear on the legislative process and scrutiny of Government. It primarily supports the select committees of both Houses.

POST is collating a guidance note for politicians to outline the challenges and options for addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance pollution. These notes published are open access (internationally). At this point in time POST is open to submissions and inputs (till 17/2/25). You may want to make an input / may want to flag an interest in being on the mailing list for the output.

Consultation and survey now closed.

The ISLANDR project is running a consultation and survey on the management of excavated soil. The information and opinions collected will be used to deliver two outputs:

1. A cross-cutting analysis of approaches to excavated soil management across Europe to be submitted to an open access journal paper;
2. A template for countries or regions to establish excavated soil management administrative systems to maximise the circular economy opportunity for soil and other excavated materials in in line with the Waste Framework Directive and Soil Strategy.

In appreciation for your contribution, as part of the consultation and survey, you may request a copy of the findings, which will be available in the first quarter of 2025.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

The online forms are open until January 17, 2025 February 7, 2025.

During CL:AIRE's 25th Anniversary event, special recognition awards were given out to five people who have gone above and beyond, supporting CL:AIRE and the wider industry in meeting their charitable aims and objectives.

Congratulations to all the honorees.

Read the full article at CL:AIRE

This presentation explores how to incorporate sustainable outcomes into the planning phases of remediation and decommissioning projects, how these outcomes are measured and vary across the breadth of activities, and specific approaches and initiatives that can provide confidence in reaching sustainable goals. An emphasis is placed on the need for remediation and decommissioning projects to be sustainable, with a general understanding that this means the outcomes of such projects balance environmental, economic, and social considerations. Conceptually, the linkages between these considerations are well-defined and broadly endorsed. In practice, however, achieving sustainable solutions can be a significant challenge, particularly when measured across the many discrete activities that may be undertaken across typically protracted project life cycles. In addition, identifying and implementing sustainable solutions often requires extensive engagement across all stakeholder groups and resolution of sometimes competing objectives and priorities.

Read in full at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory RemPlex seminar
(Please note that this document is restricted by country. UK origin does work, but others cannot be guaranteed)

This report published by the European Commission delves into the intricate interplay between drivers, pressures and impacts on soil in the 32 Member States of the European Environment Agency (EEA), along with six cooperating countries from the West Balkans, Ukraine and UK, shedding light on the multifaceted challenges facing soil conservation efforts.

Read the full article in the JRC Publications Repository

The European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC) has the ambition to be the single reference point for and to host all relevant soil data and information at European level.
Most of the offered data are at European scale, while, when possible, links to national or global datasets are provided.
Datasets are publicly available (usually after registration) and are divided into five broad categories:

1. The European Soil Database (ESDB), datasets that have been derived with the help of the ESDB and general European datasets that contain soil properties.
2. Data that are related to soil threats (erosion, soil organic carbon, landslides, compaction, salinization, soil biodiversity, contaminated sites, soil sealing, etc.)
3. Data related to soil functions
4. Soil point data (LUCAS, SPADE, etc)
5. Data that stem from soil projects.

https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/resource-type/datasets-list

Class actions and multidistrict litigation (MDL) concerning perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have led to massive settlements by chemical companies that have totaled in the billions of dollars, and that has only been to mitigate the damages that per and polyfluoroalkyl substances can cause. We are only beginning to see individual and consolidated lawsuits filed by victims against PFAS manufacturers who have actually suffered concrete harm from being exposed to these toxic PFAS chemicals.

Read the full article on jdsupra.com

Regulation (EU) 2019/1021 on persistent organic pollutants implements the EU’s international commitments under the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (chemical substances). Following a decision to add UV-328 to the Convention, this initiative amends Annex I to the Regulation to include UV-328 as a substance subject to certain restrictions.

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Find out more information at ec.europa.eu/

EPA, through its RE-Powering America's Land Initiative, maintains a list of economic and environmental benefits that have been reported by communities and developers associated with renewable energy projects on contaminated lands. Compiled from publicly available information, the latest benefits matrix offers detailed insights into how benefits such as lease and tax revenues, reduced electricity costs, job creation, and lower greenhouse gas emissions have been realised across different projects.

The locations of completed projects with their associated benefits can be explored using the Benefits Mapper.

Read the full article on epa.gov

The EU Soil Monitoring Law, designed to bolster the key role of soil in maintaining Europe's biodiversity and climate resilience, has been approved by MEPs, but only after the requirements it would place on national governments were significantly lightened.

Read the full article on Euronews.com

This guidance was released by the Chinese government in 2023.

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• Online version (Chinese) 

 

 

A new consultation seeks to pave the way for residential development on brownfield land (commonly referred to as ‘previously developed land’) in order to meet housing delivery targets across the country.

• Read the full article on Lexology.com
• Go to the consultation

At the end of November 2023 the Attorney General and the Governor of Ohio announced a US$110M settlement (currently pending court approval) with Du Pont De Nemours and Co. and The Chemours Company in response to a complaint alleging that during the course of six decades, Dupont continued to release vast quantities of perfluorooctanoic acid, known as PFOA or C8, in the groundwater, drinking water, soil, and air surrounding its plant even after it knew that PFOA was toxic to humans and the environment.

Concawe has published a new report called Case Studies and Analysis of Sustainable Remediation Techniques and Technologies. 

The report aims to fill in a recognised gap in the provision of detailed case studies documenting the practical implementation of sustainable remediation, and facilitate further refinement of guidance. Concawe commissioned CL:AIRE to a) gather, prepare and publish ten European case studies that demonstrate sustainable remediation techniques and technologies and b) provide an analysis of the case studies to identify key success factors. A cross-comparison analysis of the ten case studies has been carried out, seeking to help practitioners compare these case studies to their own projects. The cross-comparison analysis focused on the following attributes: site location and type of site (former use); saturated / unsaturated zone impact; targeted contaminants; risk drivers; envisaged land use; objectives for sustainability assessment; remediation options compared; stakeholder engagement; boundary conditions; scope (environmental, economic, social); key constraints / opportunities; and assessment type (qualitative, semi-quantitative etc). Based on this analysis and recently published guidance, a practical approach for deploying sustainable remediation on operational sites has been proposed. Working with a risk-based conceptual site model, effective engagement with stakeholders and a sound understanding of sustainable remediation practices are seen as key success factors from these case studies. 

The report was prepared by Rob Sweeney and Nicola Harries, CL:AIRE and Paul Bardos, r3 Environmental Technology Ltd.

The report is available to download on the Concawe website at www.concawe.eu and ten CL:AIRE Concawe Case Study Bulletins are available to download individually at www.claire.co.uk/concawe.

Behind some of the current political headline-grabbing which signals that a general election may not be too far away, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for 
Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, recently provided further detail on a key pillar of the government’s long-term housing plan, revealing a strategy 
of prioritising urban regeneration. 
 
In his speech, he confirmed that the government will be “unequivocally, unapologetically and intensively concentrating our biggest efforts in the hearts 
of our cities”. 

For more detail see: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=16b55e5d-6c57-4115-9d37-a24cb0334b66

r3 is a partner in a new initiative being co-ordinated by the Geological Survey of Finland GTK, which is a new research and innovation project related to the topic, ISLANDR - Information-based Strategies for Land Remediation. The project aims to develop methods for identifying the sources of soil contamination and assessing the risks they cause.

Read More …

While some state and federal agencies and other entities have guidance documents regarding soil background, there is not one comprehensive and widely accepted guidance document that summarizes the state of the science on this topic. This ITRC guidance document is intended to fill the gap by providing a comprehensive defensible framework for establishing and using soil background in risk assessments. It focuses on the process of establishing defensible background concentrations of naturally occurring or anthropogenic ambient chemicals to be used for risk assessment at contaminated sites. 

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Now available:

2019 Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Soil Contamination http://english.mee.gov.cn/Resources/laws/environmental_laws/202011/t20201113_807786.shtml

2016 Soil Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan http://english.mee.gov.cn/Resources/Plans/Plans/201712/P020171213578786221890.pdf

The third session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-3) adopted a resolution requesting member States and relevant UN bodies to explore ways to address soil pollution in a more integrated manner within the global environmental, food security and agriculture, development and health agendas, “especially through preventive approaches and risk management using available science.” A report by UNEP to be presented to UNEA-4 details some follow-up activities taken in the intersessional period to promote such integrated actions.

See https://sdg.iisd.org/news/unep-outlines-integrated-actions-to-tackle-soil-pollution-in-preparation-for-unea-4/ and https://papersmart.unon.org/resolution/uploads/k1800204.english.pdf

Intervention thresholds set for agricultural and development land

See https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=8009e1bc-788c-4389-9993-71b84cb72dd8

Detailed information (in Chinese) can be found at: http://www.mep.gov.cn/gkml/sthjbgw/sthjbgg/201807/t20180703_445969.htm

Detailed advice on Japanese Knotweed management written by a UK professional orgaisation in response to a request from the regulator. https://www.localgov.co.uk/Japanese-knotweed-New-advice-to-tackle-a-growing-problem/44674