CF meeting in Toulouse: final report

CF Website: draft website available

Information from Member States

Nicole corner

Eugris corner

As discussed in Toulouse, we will start some updating of the previous deliverables of our network, in particular the description of the current legal framework for Contaminated Land Management in European Countries, but also a comparison study of the Environmental Liability Directive Implementation.

Looking forward to continuing our collaboration,

Dominique

 

The final report of the COMMON FORUM meeting (PDF file - 70 KB) , held in Toulouse(October 16-17, 2008) is now available.

The meeting presentations are also available on the COMMON FORUM website.

 

Netherland circular on soil remediation

English version of the circular can be downloaded from VROM web site.

Recently published documents from environment agency in England and Wales

The Environment Agency for England and Wales has published framework guidance for two important areas of risk assessment for land contamination over the last few months. In August, we published updates of our CLEA (Contaminated Land Exposure Assessment) guidance covering the assessment of risks to human health from long term exposure to soil contaminants. The publications can be downloaded from UKEA web site. The package consists of:

• TOX guidance report - setting out the derivation of Tolerable Daily Intakes and Index Dose values for use in setting Soil Guideline Values based on minimal health risk,
• LEA report - setting out the assumed exposure scenarios and the basis for the parameter values / algorithms used in the CLEA model,
• LEA software as an Excel spreadsheet and software manual.

This package followed clarification from the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) on the purpose of Soil Guideline Values and their use in screening sites out of the contaminated land regime (Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990). The Defra guidance can be downloaded fom Defra web site. Revised Soil Guideline Values will be published for a range of substances in the coming months including heavy metals, PAH and BTEX.

In October, the Environment Agency published, for the first time in the UK, a framework for ecological risk assessment (ERA) under the contaminated land regime (Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990). This included provisional Soil Screening Values (SSV) for a number of substances to enable sites to be screened out. In the UK, Part 2A for ecological systems applies only to specific conservation areas protected / designated under other schemes. The framework consists of a three-tiered assessment process and is consistent with the approach taken for human health:

• Tier 1 of the risk assessment is a screening step based on a comparison of site data with Soil Screening levels,
• Tier 2 uses a choice of tools (ecological surveys and biological testing) to gather evidence for any harm to ecological receptors (plant and animal species) present at the site,
• Tier 3 seeks to attribute the harm to the chemical contamination.

The ERA guidance can be downloaded from UKEA web site.

NICOLE Workshop on Environmental Decision Support Sytems Held on 8-10 October 2008 in Madrid, Spain.

Slides and abstracts of the presentations that were given are now available at www.nicole.org. A short meeting report is attached. Detailed proceedings will follow in December.

New Documents on EUGRIS, the platform for European contaminated soil and water information. More than 26 resources, events projects and news items were added to EUGRIS 01-24 October, 2008. These can be viewed at http://www.eugris.info/whatsnew.asp. Then select the appropriate month and year for the updates in which you are interested.

However, here is a selection of new additions to EUGRIS (PDF file - 14 KB) prepared by Paul Bardos (r3 Environmental Technology Ltd) for COMMON FORUM members.