Archive for February, 2005

COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 1

Tuesday, February 15th, 2005

At a small COMMON FORUM meeting annex to theEU Soil protection policy conference in The Hague last year November we decided to strenghten the COMMON FORUM with a Secretariat. The secreteriat will be financed as a project to avoid the perception that we are creating a new international organisation. The formulation of such a project and the exploration of all the admistrative and financial aspects will take some time. But the developments in policy and research go on. This mail will inform you briefly about the following recent developments:

1] A meeting about harmonization of contaminated land risk assessment held in ISPRA , 3 and 4 februari 2005
2] A EU questionnaire whith a question about “unexcavated contaminated soil as waste”
3] A next COMMON FORUM meeting

1] ISPRA MEETING

JRC invited a number of contaminated land experts, toxicologists and ecotoxicologists for a meeting to discuss harmonization of various aspects of contaminated land risk assessment. The benefits of harmonizing certain aspects, especially basic toxicological and chemical data, were stressed in the TWG contamination report for EU soil strategy discussion. JRC is running a number of contamination related projects and could host some harmonization effort -as recommended by TWG contamination- as a part of these projects. They see consensus building in EU as an important part of their mission. This harmonization activity could take place in particular in the JRC HERACLES project which aims to evaluate various assessment approaches (including remote sensing and LCA approaches) at pilot sites. Concerning contaminated land risk assessment the main emphasis would be on preliminary risk assessment, which is often used to classify or prioritize contaminated sites. As a full report of this meeting is beyond the scope of this email I will only mention the most important results. A full report will be drafted by JRC.

a) Before the meeting a questionnaire has been sent to the participants about feasibility and priority of harmonazition of human health and ecological health risk assessment aspects. The results were quite positive: Basic data could be “harmonized” by creating common databases (European references). Models and formula for exposure assessment could be included in tool boxes which could be made readily available for the users. The more politically sensitive part of final decision making could be reviewed, comparable to the reviews which have been made during CARACAS and CLARINET. Further work along this line has been done at the meeting, which yielded lists of aspects fit for the database approach or for the toolbox approach in the human health and in the ecological field of interest.

b) Possible overlap between the starting HERACLES project and a running EEA/ Topic centre TE project on identification risk zones related to soil contamination which may be of EU wide interest ( a uniform risk assessment tool is also developed and applied in this project to classify and rank sites) is identified and some collaboration between these projects was established.

c) The presence of Claudia Olazabal DG-ENV showed that DG-ENV is interested in the follow up of the soil strategy discussion. Her presentation about the progress in the thematic strategy for soil protection focussed on the following:
Most memberstates see soil policy as national by tradition, but certain impacts have international consequences. Nowadays soil is more and more considered as a common resource, also for future Europe. If commissioner Dimas agrees a draft soil framework directive and a communication will be published by September 2005. The directive will deal with all threats but not at a level of detail comparable to the Water Framework Directive. The Soil Framework directive will describe common principles, definitions and responsibilities at the different administrative levels ( EU, membestates, local authorities). It will not contain “harmonised risk assessment procedures” but an accompanying work program may contain initiatives to start the discussion about implementation of the recommendations of TWG research concerning harmonisation.

2] UNEXCAVATED SOIL AS WASTE

Recently a questionnaire was sent by EC to the memberstates containing among many IPPC related questions a question concerning the “unexcavated soil as waste problem”. The statement of the court in the well known case against Texaco, that soil contaminated by an oil spill had to be considered as waste even if the soil is not (yet) excavated, may have important consequences for the scope of EU waste regulations. One of the questions was if all ‘unexcavated’ contaminated soil should we considered as a waste subject to EU waste regulations. The answer to this question may have important juridical consequences for contaminated land owners and for national policies dealing with contaminated soil. Because the questionnaire is mainly waste related it may have escaped your attention as a contaminated land specialist and it may be important to get informed about the answer of your Ministry to the EC. The results of the questionnaire will be discussed in a meeting in Brussels were probably only the national waste contact persons will be invited. I think contaminated land experts should be involved in this discussion. This can be done at the national level but we could also prepare a COMMON FORUM position. It may be useful in any case to inform each other about the various national positions in this question. Please send me your opinions, comments and formal national position if you want to share these with COMMON FORUM.

3] NEXT COMMON FORUM

Given the many developments in EU a number of CF proposed to have a meeting in May 2005. A second short meeting could take place during CONSOIL in Bordeaux. I like to be informed about your availability for a 2 days meeting in Vienna (many thanks to Harald Kasamas for his offer to find hotels and meeting place) on the following dates in May:10&11; 12&13; 17&18; 19&20; 24&25