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COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 3

By Joop | April 5, 2005

It is time to start thinking about the programme of the Vienna meeting, which will be held on 12 and 13 May, in the big meeting room of the Austrian Ministry of Environment, A-1010 Vienna, Stubenbastei 5. Harald Kasamas is currently investigating the options for “special rate”-hotels (within walking distance, below € 100). To be able to book a contingent of rooms it is necessary to let us know as soon as possible whether you will attend the meeting and need a hotel for one or more nights. So please answer the three urgent questions at the end of this mail as soon as possible.

The meeting will be a traditional one with a late start on the first day and an early end the second day to allow for early morning arrivals in Vienna and late afternoon departures. I propose the following agenda:

THURSDAY 12 May

SESSION 1] 10-12 hr: OPENING & GENERAL MATTERS
This session is reserved for discussing the state of affairs concerning the structure of COMMON FORUM and the funding of it’s secretariat, and the role of COMMON FORUM at the Consoil conference in Bordeaux, october 2005. There is room in this session for a number of other small communications.

a] Common forum secretariat.
Concerning the state of affairs with the secretariat I can say that some progress has been made. At the previous COMMON FORUM meeting (The Hague, 17 November 2004) a decision was made to try to fund the secretariat as an international project. The Dutch country representatives promised to make a project description ( budget, deliverables, workhours and so on) which would be sent to the country representative members of COMMON FORUM with the request to consider possibilities to sponsor the project. To help the Dutch country representatives with their task I drafted a first outline of a project description in december 2004. This has been discussed and I drafted a final version accordingly, which I sent to the Dutch Ministry on 14 februari. Miech Steenwinkel ( responsable for COMMON FORUM affairs at the Ministry and also COMMON FORUM country representative for NL) told me last week that the final project description has now been accepted at the director level, which means that the common forum country representatives can soon expect a letter from the Dutch Ministry with a formal request to help to fund the secretariat. I expect that you or your Ministry will receive this request soon, in any case before the COMMON FORUM meeting in Vienna.

b] Consoil
As many COMMON FORUM members will be present at Consoil, it is attractive to organize a short meeting during this conference. There are several options. One is using the free wednesday afternoon. Another option is to use time slots devoted to “special sessions” organized by COMMON FORUM members. For instance Dominique Darmendrail is organizing a session with the (former ad Hoc) working group on contaminated land. COMMON FORUM may join this session. The most important thing we need to decide in Bordeaux is the place of the next COMMON FORUM meeting (spring 2006). Some ideas about the agenda for this meeting are of course welcomed. I am sure that Consoil will inspire us.

SESSION 2] 13- 17.30 hr: RISK BASED REMEDIATION TARGETS
Risk assessment has been on the COMMON FORUM agenda for some time. However risk based solutions seem to be less straightforward especially if they have to be formulated in generic terms. And because in the real world there are so many simple contaminated land problems that can be solved on a ‘routine’ basis without requiring ’special design’ solutions some risk based remediation targets may be useful tools. It is like house building. Many standard building projects are using “prefab” standard designs and only in special occasions custom designed architecture is used. The session aims at exchanging experiences with the derivation and implementation of land use related “risk-based remediation targets” between the participating countries.. A study for the Austrian contaminated land programme has been started recently and our Austrian host country and perhaps some other countries would benefit from advise from experienced countries. I propose to devote the afternoon of the first day to discuss this issue. I would like to have three presentations about national approaches, for instance from Germany, the UK and Flanders. These presentations will highlite the diversity of approaches and we may be able to find some common ground in these and provide some recommendations for countries which are starters in this area. After the presentations we can have a discussion in smaller groups, which may result in some general conclusions and recommendations.

FRIDAY 13 May

Session 3] 9- 12 hr: EU POLICY DEVELOPMENT
In this session I propose to discuss recent EU policy developments: Soil protection, Soil and waste and the groundwater directive.

a] Soil framework directive and communication.
There is some news from the commission concerning an upcoming soil communication and a soil framework directive. Representatives of the commission presented their views on 15 March for the “Environmental Policy review group” ( DG’s of the Ministries of Environment of the memberstates). The rumours about an upcoming Soil Framework Directive were confirmed. The commission intends to publish a (draft) framework directive, an extended impact assessment of the many recommendations of the soil thematic strategy discussion and a communication about the way forward (especially for issues not yet dealt with in the directive) in November 2005. EU DG ENV stated that the directive will be about common principles and definitions and much less detailed as the Water framework directive. Although many country representatives at this meeting felt reassured by this, there were still mixed feelings. Some countries are still opposed to an EU directive about soils, whereas other countries would welcome it, of course depending on the specific contents. There are some interesting aspects in the plans of the commission concerning “contamination”. Apart from a further specification of common principles and definitions for soil protection, a common definition of contamination (and as a logical consequence contaminated land) is likely to be proposed, although many countries are not in favor of having a contaminated land catalogue at the EU level. Another interesting aspect is that the commission intends to define a “working unit” for EU policy. For regional soil threats like erosion, decline of organic matter, compaction, flood and landslides the focal point of EU policy will be on so called “risk areas” . For other threats like sealing ( closely related to national and subnational spatial planning) and contamination (many national policies and contaminated land programs already in place), the working unit will be more on the national/ regional level. There is a need for more subsidiarity here, due to the stronger links of these policies with the national and regional public administrations. The overall strategy (framework directive and communication) is to be characterised as “light” , which may be interpreted as finding common ground for cooperation between memberstates before resorting to hard “command and control” regulations at the EU level.
I have the impression that this new “policy package” will partly replace or reschedule older plans like the soil monitoring directive, the revision of the sewage sludge directive and the directive about biodegradable waste (compost directive). Sewage (and other) sludge and biodegradable waste will be discussed further in a thematic strategy on waste and the revision of the waste framework directive.

All this is second hand information and it is important that COMMON FORUM country representatives check the reports of the national representatives that were present at the “Environmental Policy review group” meeting. The discussion in Vienna may lead to a COMMON FORUM position which we may send to DG ENV. In any case an internet consultation is planned in summer so we may also send our comments individually, using inspiration from the discussion in Vienna.

b] Unexcavated contaminated soil as waste.
Apart from the fact that nobody is happy to have soil (contaminated or not) labeled as waste, I have at present no new information about the direction EU policy will take in this area. We will exchange information and experiences in Vienna and may decide for some COMMON FORUM joint approach. The issue will also be discussed at the Consoil conference in a special session organized by the Nicole network

c] Groundwater
The current version of the groundwater directive still includes some text which prevents possible conflicts between the protection of groundwater resources and contaminated groundwater risk management using long term ( monitored) natural attenuation. However as we all know there is often a large gap between legal formulations and practical implementation. One of the key points in this is the derivation of treshold values for the protection of groundwater bodies.
BRIDGE, a EC-funded policy-support STREP is dealing with the topic of ‘threshold values for groundwater bodies’ and will propose a common methodology how such threshold values can/should be derived. Dietmar Müller, (from Austria) is a “co-chair” in this project and offered to give a presentation about BRIDGE. This may be used as a starting point for discussion in COMMON FORUM

Session 4] 13-15 hr: EU RESEARCH ( and closing of the meeting)
Knowledge transfer from research to practice has always been a major concern of COMMON FORUM. Although many EU and national research projects do publish their results on individual websites, it takes a lot of energy and time to absorb and digest this large amount of very diverse information. Joint programming (cooperation between national programs) as started by the SNOWMAN project will help, the formulation of larger integrated projects (AQUATERRA) in EU FP6 and 7 may help, demonstration projects (EURODEMO) may help, but a common source of information in an up to date website where all the results of current research in EU concerning contaminated land and water resources can be found is of utmost importance. If the website also contains information about current and “emerging’ policies, it can be a useful tool for scientists planning new research on the basis of the state of the art in science and on the basis of a clear picture of the development of future policies. It can also be an important tool for policy makers concerning the question whether policy ideas can be backed up by proper science and for practical implementation concerning the question of practical feasibility of techniques and technologies. The EUGRIS website is getting closer to this ideal situation, but it is still ‘under construction’ and funded as such by EU DG research. It is important to consider the next phase: a self supporting EUGRIS. Many practitioners in the contaminated land field mention the US EPA clue inn website as a good example. However this website is aimed at the US situation, whereas the EU situation may be different. They state that the ideal situation would be if consulting EUGRIS and US EPA would give them an overview of the state of the art for their work. If EUGRIS will only be remembered as one of the many interesting research projects we may have missed a big opportunity and wasted a lot of money. Can we promote the use of EUGRIS as COMMON FORUM?
The future of EUGRIS is one topics for discussion in this session. The remaining of the session will aim at updating our information about ongoing and recently ended projects like:

SNOWMAN
EUGRIS
EURODEMO
AQUATERRA
SOWA
JOINT
SEDNET
CABERNET
CORA (big German program)
Others ?????
We will of course not have the time to discuss the results of the projects in detail, but it is important that we all have the same level of information about these projects for further discussions.

URGENT
Please inform me about the following:
1] will you be present at the meeting in Vienna
2] Do you need hotel accommodation and for which nights
3] Do you agree with the agenda I proposed, please feel free to suggest changes and/or additions

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