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« Previous Entries Next Entries »COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 25 Meeting report of the COMMON FORUM meeting in Stuttgart 24&25 April and other NEWS
Monday, July 2nd, 2007Dear All,
Please find the Meeting Report and of the last COMMON FORUM and the presentation(jlp_stgt) of French policy developments by Jean-Luc Perrin at this meeting. After this meeting an intensive email discussion among the country representatives in COMMON FORUM has resulted in a list of proposals for changes in the Soil Framework Directive, which is currently discussed in EU Council and in EU Parliament. This document (SFDCOMFORDRAFT4) is also attached to this mail. It is important to note that this is NOT intended as a “COMMON FORUM” position but as a source of inspiration for those involved in the political discussions. Those of you who follow the discussions in the Council and EU parliament may have noted that this inspiration indeed worked.
OTHER ATTACHMENTS:
a)Social cost-benefit analysis of the soil remediation operation in the Netherlands
As promised the english summary of a report on the benefits of soil remediation in the NL: mkba.doc
Further information: Co.molenaar@minvrom.nl
b) Community guidelines for state aid for environmental protection
Victor Dries asked me to bring this (Community guidelines) under your attention, as a follow up of the state aid discussions we had in Bilbao.
c)EUGRIS news may 2007: eugris-2007-5-24.doc
d)EUGRIS news june 2007: eugris-2007-6-24.doc
e)Presentation SETAC conference
The SETAC (Society for environmental toxicology and chemistry), a big worldwide scientific organisation held a conference in Porto on 20-24 May 2007. There was a special session on Soil, where Niek de Wit (EUDGENV) presented an overview of EU soil protection policy, and Luca Montanarella (EU DGJRC- European Soil Bureau) presented the history of EU involvement in Soil Protection. I was asked by the SETAC Europe president to give a presentation about the Pro´s and Con´s of the proposed European Soil Framework Directive, see attached presentation setacvt.PPTwhich can be summarized as follows:
All EU memberstates welcomed the initiative for soil protection at the EU level because it puts soil higher on the policital agenda. The scope of EU soil protection is wider than current soil protection in most memberstates. The legal part of the policy, the soil framework directive, does however give rise to some debate, especially the proposed legal obligations concerning the management of (historically)contaminated sites. Countries that have a long policy tradition in contaminated land remediation are afraid that they have to revise their successful policies, wheras countries that still have to start with the assessment of their contaminated land problemsseem to want as much guidance from the directive as possible. It will be difficult to find the right balance in the directive. Heterogeneity in national soil policies is not the only difficulty however. Soil types are widely different over Europe and so is the way these soils are used, which in turn leads to important regional social and economic differences. Moreover the majority of soil problems are local and although transboundary problems do exist some may say that these do not justify an EU wide framework directive.On the other hand if we consider the joint impact of the many local soil problems there is indeed a European dimension. One should also be aware that “Europe” is almost always part of the solution of these local or regional soil problems, if we consider the impact of subsidized agriculture on soils, the impact EUcontrolled air pollution on soils, the impact of EU approved waste recycling on soils and the potential impact of widely different national soil protection policies on the balance of competion between Member States. The presentation addressed the various implications of the current proposal and their pro’s and con’s in view of a more sustainable use of soil (and water) resources in Europe.
The discussions at SETAC were quite interesting, but an important observation was that new Member States from Eastern Europe do know far more about the state of their soil than the countries from the west. It was also noted that for the SETAC scientists the most important scientific contribution still seems to be the derivation of soil quality standards. Many other scientific questions about sustainable management of soil resources are hardly recognized, which means that there is a lot of work to do to improve the interface between science and policy in soil protection.
NEXT COMMON FORUM:
COMMON FORUM will meet together with ICCL from 10 till 12 September in Stockholm. The main COMMON FORUM topics for the agenda are:
1] Quality control and management of contaminated land risk assessments and remediation, by certification, and standardization via protocols and other means
2] Discussions on technical details of the proposed SFD and perhaps certain amendments proposed by EU parliament, and the COMMON FORUM strategy to make the best of this directive.
3] A discussion on a document evaluating the COMMON FORUM secretariat project and exploring the possibilties for the future.
4] Planning of the next COMMON FORUM meeting.
Topics 2,3 and 4 are internal EU “political” affairs and internal housekeeping in COMMON FORUM and will be discussed on 12 September, the “COMMON FORUM only” part of the meeting. ICCL delegates will be welcome as guests if they are interested.
SECRETARIAT HOLIDAYS
Please note that the secretariat will be on holidays from July 6 till August 4 2007.
Regards,
Joop
COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 23 & 24 Agenda and meeting information for Stuttgart 24&25 April - other news
Thursday, April 19th, 2007Dear All,
Please find the meeting agenda CF agenda Stuttgart and participants list Participants for the COMMON FORUM meeting in Stuttgart. PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO BRING the COMMON FORUM discussion paper Discussion paper . Also find a copy of EUGRIS news mentionning what’s new on this website for your informationEUGRIS NEWS.
1] TRAVEL
You can reach the hotel by lines S1, S2, S3 to BAD CANNSTATT and line U2 to KURSAAL. I do hope to meet you all at the get together in the Wine cellar located a 100 meter from the hotel Mecure Bad Canstatt. We can meet in the lobby of this hotel at 19.00 on 23/04 to walk this short distance together.
HOTEL ADDRESS:
Mercure Hotel Stuttgart Bad Cannstatt
Teinacher Strasse 20
BADEN WÜRTTEMBERG
70372 STUTTGART
GERMANY
Tel : (+49)711/95400
Fax : (+49)711/9540630
E-mail : H1704@accor.com
2] EUGRIS
Paul Bardos informed us that visitors to EUGRIS are continuing to rise, in March EUGRIS had 44,937 visits and delivered 11.68 Gigabytes of data to users. EUGRIS.info now has:
o >80 general technical information zones related to soil and water
o 6 country contaminated land and water management information zones
o 2675 resources (document, software, hardware and web site listings)
o 51 funding programmes listings
o 218 R&D project listings
o 301 organisations listings
o 221 current news items as well as conference / training listings
o A glossary of 505 terms, often linked to national definitions and translations
EUGRIS has 2068 registered users from all over the world and many many more casual visitors.
COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 22 Draft agenda for COMMON FORUM 24 & 25 April 2007 and draft discussion paper on SFD
Thursday, April 19th, 2007Dear All,
As our next meeting is approaching please find the outline of the agenda and some other important news below
1] A COMMON FORUM paper on the SFD:
The COMMON FORUM agenda committee proposed to prepare a document with short statements about the contaminated land part of the proposed Soil Framework Directive (SFD). The document is not intended to become a common position paper, but is intended to help those of us who have to prepare national positions to choose the best arguments to suit their needs and to be aware of arguments that may be used by others. Please find the first draft of this paper attached SFDCOMFOR.doc . You are kindly invited to add your own statements. You may add them to the existing text. If you do so before APRIL 11 can produce a second and better draft for the Stuttgart meeting, 24 & 25 April.
2] DRAFT AGENDA FOR STUTTGART:
Monday 23 April: 19.00 : Informal get together, offered by the German Environment Ministry
Tuesday 14 April 10.00 : Start of the meeting in the Hotel Mercure Stuttgart Bad Cannstat.
10.00 - 11.00: Welcome and “Tour de Table”.
In the Tour the Table each participant has maximum 2 minutes introducing yourself and making a short statement about her/his expectations and experiences in COMMON FORUM your remarks will be used to prepare a document about the future of COMMON FORUM, to be discussed in the next meeting in September
11.00 -11.20: Presentation by Jean-Luc Perrin on the new French policy for contaminated land management
11.20 -11.40 : Coffee break
11.40- 12.10 : The waste framework directive and contaminated soil ( excavated & unexcavated).
This discussion will be introduced by Victor Dries. If necessary we can decide to take action as COMMON FORUM and try to influence this EU discussion in the right direction.
12.10 -12.30 : Introduction to the afternoon group discussions about contaminated land in the proposed SFD.
The goal is to produce a “catalogue of statements”, not a position paper. A draft paper for this discussion is attached to this mail (SFDCOMFOR.doc)
12.30- 13.30 Lunch
13.30- 15.30 Group discussions
15.30- 16.00 Tea Break
16.00- 16.45 Reports of the groups
16.45 -17.00 Plenary conclusions
17.30 -17.30 Any other business, next meetings, closure of the meeting
19.30 Welcome reception REVIT & CABERNET by Lord Mayor of Stuttgart ( all COMMON FORUM delegates are invited)
Wednesday 25 April 14.00: Session COMMON FORUM Urban Soil Initiative at the REVIT & CABERNET conference see programme,final announcement.pdf . COMMON FORUM members which did not register and payed a fee for the conference are allowed to attend this session only (without fee) as special REVIT & CABERNET guests.
3] INVITATION FOR A NICOLE WORKSHOP ON REDEVELOPMENT OF SITES 13-15 June in The Netherlands.
Please find the invitation invitation.doc a preliminary program Program Nicole and a registration form Registration Nicole attached. This workshop may nicely complement the REVIT &CABERNET conference.
COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 21 Hotel Booking for COMMON FORUM 24 & 25 April 2007 and for CABERNET/ REVIT 25-27 April.
Thursday, April 19th, 2007Dear All,
Please allow me to remind you to make your hotel reservations and registration for the CABERNET/ REVIT conference ( if you want to attend this).
1] HOTEL RESERVATION
The prebooking of the rooms at the the Hotel Mercure Stuttgart Bad Cannstatt, (see www.mercure.com) expires on 21/03/07.
IMPORTANT: ALL hotel bookings should be made via the Conference Secretary Beate Deckert. ( NOT via me). The adress of Beate is:
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart
Amt für Stadtplanung und Stadterneuerung
61-8.1
Beate Deckert
Eberhardstraße 10
70173 Stuttgart
Telefon: 0711 216-3258
Fax: eFax 0711 216953258
E-Mail: Beate.Deckert
2] REGISTRATION FOR THE CABERNET REVIT CONFERENCE
Registration is ONLY required if you want to attend one or more days of the CABERNET/ REVIT conference. If you want to attend the COMMON FORUM SESSSION ONLY (wednesday 25 afternoon) NO registration is required. You will be considered as special guests of the conference organisers for that session (only).
3] COMMON FORUM AGENDA
The agenda is as suggested in COMMON FORUM News nr 20, I will send a more detailed draft agenda next week
4] NEW COMMON FORUM MEMBER
To complete the Belgian delegation - you may remember that there are three regions in Belgium. Flanders, Wallonia and the Brussels region- we welcome Jean-Pierre Janssens (jpj@ibgebim.be) from the Brussels region to the COMMON FORUM
5] EUGRIS
There is some progress in the work to achieve COMMON FORUM presence on the EUGRIS website. There is a COMMON FORUM info bank in English and a German which already contains many documents in a nice searchable stucture. Please consider adding interesting material. Weblink: http://www.commonforum.eugris.info/
COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 20 (updated) Next meeting Stuttgart 24 & 25/04/07
Monday, February 19th, 2007Dear All,
As discussed on earlier occasions we will meet in Stuttgart on 24 and 25 April, where we join the CABERNET & REVIT 2nd international conference on managing urban land. The preliminary program of our meeting is as follows:
The preliminary program of our meeting is as follows:
1] Get together on monday evening 23 april, most probably in the wine cellar of the municipality’s winery , traditionally offered by the secretariat
2] Plenary meeting of COMMON FORUM 24 april in the Hotel Mercure Stuttgart Bad Cannstatt, see www.mercure.com
The agenda will be mainly devoted to the recent developments of the EU soil policy proposals. We will have a joint dinner after the meeting, which will hopefully be sponsored by our host country.
3] Workshop session at the CABERNET & REVIT conference on the afternoon of 25 april
a] BACKGROUND INFO:
URBAN SOILS AN EMERGING PROBLEM?
Many scenario studies for landuse in Europe predict an enormous expansion of urban areas in the next decades. Sealing of soils due to constructions and infrastructure has been identified as one of the most important threats to soil in the Thematic strategy for soil protection in the European union. There is a need for European member states to diminish sealing and to use land resources more efficiently. This can be done by redeveloping old industrial areas and other derelict land – the so-called brownfields- instead of using more greenfields for urban expansion. But brownfield redevelopment on its own can only slightly diminish the consumption of green land. The general trend is that urban land will increase. This leads to several important questions. First of all whether the large cities of tomorrow will be healthier than the cities of the past. Several projects are now studying on how to make urban environments more attractive and ecologically sound but they mainly address above ground aspects or are addressing specific regions . The importance of ecological functions and services of soils in urban systems is not yet fully recognized. In any case complete sealing of soils in large urban areas should be avoided, because the filter and buffer capacity and the biodegradation potential of urban soils may need to be exploited to the full in future.
Most knowledge about soils (and sediments) comes from natural soils or from agricultural soils. Urban soils are quite different and deserve special attention in view of the ecological services they can provide for a sustainable urban environment and their capacity to cope with contamination through biodegradation and long-term adsorption. This will contribute to ecological and human health in the urban environment and will help to prevent further spreading of contaminants into groundwater en surface waters. A dedicated research program on all ecological aspects of urban soil seems necessary, involving classification of urban soils, investigation of specific properties and their potential to perform ecological services.
Those involved in soil remediation and brownfield redevelopment already discovered the use of some these ecological services by noting that the soil itself has properties that contribute to risk reduction by biodegradation (monitored natural attenuation) or by acting as a barrier for the spread of contamination. It is necessary to expand this knowledge to achieve ecologically sound urban environments and also to answer the questions how properly designed urban systems can make up for the loss of ecological services of the green land that is consumed for urbanization.
b] PROGRAMME FOR THE SESSION ( Wednesday afternoon 25 april)
1-Dr. Joop Vegter ( COMMON FORUM) - Introductory keynote
2-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Burghardt (university of Essen) - Urban soil ecology, scientific perspectives I
3- Dr. Stefan Norra, (Institut für Mineralogie und Geochemie, Universität Karlsruhe (TH)), Urban soils , scientific perspectives II
4-Dipl-Ing. Martin Schamann ( UBA- Vienna). Lessons learned from the Interreg IIIB Alpine Space Project TUSEC-IP “Technique of Urban Soil Evaluation in City Regions – Implementation in Planning Procedures”.
Each presentation will be around 20 minutes with 5 minutes for questions Total speaking time 25 minutes per presentation
After the presentation 30 -45 minutes plenary discussions about possibilities for future research
3] HOTEL ACCOMMODATION AND CONFERENCE FEE
Thomas Ertel, one of the CABERNET REVIT conference organisers made a prebooking for rooms at the Mercure Stuttgart Bad Cannstatt Hotel (www.mercure.com) . The prerervation expires on 22 march, so book in time. Please note that ALL hotel reservations (23.-27.04.07) have to be booked by mailing Beate Deckert and NOT directly by the hotel. Please sign your reservation mail and the registration form for the conferene with “COMMON FORUM”. Those who can attend the CABERNET REVIT conference can register using the attached registration form(Registration CABERNET/REVIT). Participating at the CABERNET REVIT conference also involves a conference fee for one or more days. There seems to be a possibility for a discount for delegates from central and eastern European countries. Please consult the CABERNET REVIT conference website http://www.revit-cabernet.org/.
The full contact details of Beate Deckert are:
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart
Amt für Stadtplanung und Stadterneuerung 61-8.1
Beate Deckert
Eberhardstraße 10
70173 Stuttgart
Telefon: 0711 216-3258
Fax: eFax 0711 216953258
E-Mail: Beate.Deckert
Best regards,
Joop
COMMON FORUM NEWS NR.19 a request and some information
Sunday, January 21st, 2007Dear All,
Jörg Frauenstein sent me a request on behalf of the SNOWMAN project, the first programme for transnational research projects in the field of soil and groundwater which is financed by national research funders. SNOWMAN would like to invite COMMON FORUM experts as “Peer Reviewers” to assess the proposals. In addition to this there is interesting information from NICOLE and Claudia Olazabal en Paul Bardos suggested some interesting publications.
1] SNOWMAN
As announced during the Budapest meeting last year the SNOWMAN-Call really started with December 2006.
SNOWMAN would like to invite experts from the Common Forum to be “Peer Reviewers” in the selection process of proposals for these transnational projects.
Detailed information about the scientific topics of the call and the procedure are available on the SNOWMAN homepage.
http://www.snowman-era.net
In case of any requests or expressing interest you can send an e-mail directlyJoerg Frauenstein (joerg.frauenstein@uba.de) until end of January.
2] NICOLE
NICOLE prepared a discussion paper, which describes the NICOLE position the Thematic strategy for soil protection and the proposed Soil framework directive see attachement NICOLE soil position paper
3] INTERESTING DOCUMENTS ON EUGRIS
Some contaminated land guidance still in use in the UK dates back to the 1980s and has not been available in downloadable form, in particular:
o Contaminated Land Reports (CLRs) 1 to 6 and 12, and
o Publications of the former Interdepartmental Committee on
the Redevelopment of Contaminated Land (ICRCL).
Defra and the Environment Agency have recently completed scanning these to PDF, and these are now available for download
For more information (and some important caveats) go to:
http://www.eugris.info/DisplayNewsItem.asp?NewsID=371
4] STUDY ON ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES
Claudia Olazabal informed us of the report on “Eco-industry, its size, employment, perspectives and barriers to growth in an enlarged EU”, carried out by Ernst & Young and RDC-Environnement for the European Commission over a period between April 2005 and September 2006. This report has been put online on DG ENV website:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/enveco/studies2.htm#industry-employment
There is a whole part on the market for soil remediation, which is quite interesting. However as always these are the views of the consultants and not necessarily of the Commission. Never the less the annual turnover in the Soil remediation sector in EU and number of employees is quite impressive
Some revealing figures, from this study (approx estimates):
Turn over of the sector (billions/year) Number of employees (EU25)
Air quality protection 15.8 120.000
Water treatment 80 320.000
Soil remediation 5.2 36.000
Waste management 50 843.000
Noise control 1.95* 30.000
*(this actually the expenditure, not the declared turn over of the sector)
COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 17 & 18 Report of the meeting in Bilbao 2-3 /11/2006
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006Dear All,
Please find the final report ( Report of the meeting in Bilbao ) of the Bilbao meeting, as sent as COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 18. NEWS NR.17 was about the draft report and for this reason NR 17 is not archived on this website.
The presentations referred to in the report can be downloaded by using the links below: CABERNET.pps
Finland.ppt
Netherlands.ppt
eudgcomp.ppt
Group 1.ppt
Group3.ppt
Group 4.ppt
LucaMarmo - Common Forum - Bilbao.ppt
The files Ireland.ppt and Basque.ppt can be downloaded by clicking the following: link
COMMON FORUM NEWS NR.16 Agenda for the meeting in Bilbao 2&3/11/06
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006Dear All,
Please find the agenda: CF agenda Bilbao. I do hope that many of you will join us in Bilbao
Regards,
Joop
COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 15
Thursday, September 28th, 2006Dear All,
The biggest news, and most of your probably already heard it, is the publication last friday of the EU soil protection policy package containing a communication about the soil protection strategy, a proposal for a soil framework directive, an impact assessement ( large document) and a summary of the impact assessment, a press communication, a questions and answers document and a beautiful document entitled ” soil protection, the story behind the strategy” . All this can be downloaded from http://ec.europa.eu/environment/soil/index.htm
This means that we can now discuss the real texts in the open, and we will have a good start at the meeting in Bilbao. Luca Marmo from the DGENV soil team will give an in depth presentation and we will have time to exchange opinions. Another important discussion we will have in Bilbao is about the rules for ” state aid” and the financing of soil remediation projects. We will have some presentations about experiences in memberstates and a larger in depth presentation by Saskia Dirkzwager - De Rijk from EU DG Competition. State aid will be the theme of the now traditional smaller group discussions on the afternoon at the first day.
Other issues on the agenda are:
A special request for a discussion by our hosts, which I am presently discussing by email with Ana Alzola (IHOBE, Basque country) who helps me to organize the meeting
A get together on wednesday evening November 1
A joint dinner with possibly a visit to the famous Guggenheim museum
MY QUESTIONS:
1] Please look at the draft agenda below and if you have any comments, questions or additions please let me know as soon as possible . I kept the times for the different session a bit flexible in view of the probably later than usual lunch and dinner times in Spain
2] Please confirm your presence or absence at this meeting so that the organizers have an estimate of the number of participants.
AGENDA COMMON FORUM MEETING IN BILBAO 2 & 3 NOVEMBER 2006
November 1, Informal get together at a place still to be decided, start 19.00
November 2, start 10.00
- Opening and welcome by a representative of the Basque country
- Introduction to the agenda
- Tour the table ( short introductions and statements by meeting participants) part 1
Coffee break
- Tour the table ( short introductions and statements by meeting participants) part 2
- The Bilbao case
Lunch
- One or two country presentations on state aid
- EU presentation on current developments of ideas concerning state aid and contaminated sites remediation funding (Saskia Dirkzwager)
Tea Break
- Group discussion
Dinner (possibly in combination with a visit to the Guggenheim museum)
Day 2 start 9.00
-Reports of group discussions
-General conclusions
Coffee break
-Presentation of the EU soil policy package (Luca Marmo)
-Discussion
Lunch
-Discussion about next common forum activities
COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 14
Thursday, September 7th, 2006Dear All,
I do hope that you all have had nice holidays. Meanwhile some decisions were made concerning the next meeting in Bilbao and the COMMON FORUM website has gone “public”:
see http://www.commonforum.eu
1] COMMON FORUM MEETING IN BILBAO 2 & 3 NOVEMBER 2006
As always I have to disappoint some COMMON FORUM members and guests who prefered to meet in October. The majority of respondents to my previous mail were in favour of 2 and 3 November. The agenda will ( most likely) cover the following subjects:
a] Contaminated land remediation funding and EU guidelines concerning state aid
This will be the topic of the in-depth group discussion on the afternoon of 2 November. There are some offers for small presentations on national experiences with state aid, but most COMMON FORUM members asked for a keynote presentation by an expert from the EU commission. I will try to invite someone from DG competition to give a presentation on recent EU views concerning state aid and contaminated land remediation funding.
b] The soil framework directive (if it is published before the meeting)
If the soil strategy and the framework directive are published before the meeting we should devote some time to discuss these. I do hope to have some news about this sometime before the meeting in view of the planning of the agenda. If not we should accept a flexible agenda to cope with last minute developments.
c] News about national policy developments
Some members asked to organize a tour de table session with very limited speaking time for each. I will send some ideas for a focussed approach together with the final agenda for the meeting
d] Developments in EU research and projects related to COMMON FORUM , including the exploratory study on expertise centers in the field of urban soil ecosystems discussed in Budapest
e] Next meeting ( most probably in Germany)
2] COMMON FORUM WEBSITE
When clicking the link in this mail you will be directed to the website by your webbrowser. Do not expect a spectacular fancy website. The purpose is to inform you and not to impress you.
The main contents are the COMMON FORUM NEWS mails, some info about COMMON FORUM including the mission statement, a list with members and guests and some links to websites important for our work
3] COMMON FORUM SECRETARIAT
Please note that I will be travelling from monday 11 september till sunday 24 september. I will check my emails and reply to urgent ones in this period, and will attend the kick off meeting of the RISKBASE coordination action in Barcelona on 20 &21 september.
Best regards,
Joop