Green Europe

“The world is beginning to see that you cannot act against the environment. Many financial institutions are departing from subsidizing investments that are contrary to the principles of sustainable development, "said Sebastian Stachowski, Managing Director of Lion Environmental, the organizer of REMEDy a, opening this year's conference. To this should be added social expectations and the risk of loss of trust and image by commercial companies. This makes organizations increasingly interested in the environment. The low-carbon economy pursued by the civilized world is also becoming a factor of change. A good example of top-down changes is the new economic development strategy of the European Union known as the European Green Deal. “By 2050, we should become land-use neutral in Europe. I do not know how it will be implemented, but the first step should be remediation and recovery of contaminated sites "- said Marco Falconi, REMEDy 2020 Key Note Speaker. Marco Falconi is an employee of ISPRA in Italy, the equivalent of the Polish General Directorate for Environmental Protection, co-organizes the largest industry conference in Italy REMTECH remediation. He is also the head of the pan-European IMPEL initiative, which brings together all European Union countries (and several others). According to him, the new European policy will have a strong impact on the remediation industry and the dissemination of the problem of contaminated soil and groundwater in Europe. There are estimates of one trillion euros that will be spent on cleaning up pollutants in the next decade. In addition, as the special guest of the conference pointed out, now there is also a "covid" fund, which is to stimulate the economy in 2012-2027, it is another EUR 100 billion, some of which will be used for projects improving the condition of soil and water.

It is worth realizing that remediation is not something incidental, involving several post-industrial lands. The scale of the problem across Europe is huge. Marco Falconi presented a report from 2018 which shows that industrialized countries have a really big problem. The pan-European initiative on the basis of which the report was based was, inter alia, to develop a definition of pollution common to the member states. By achieving consistency in the determination, it was easier to check contaminated locations. In 2018, there were nearly 2.8 million (!) Of them in total. Another 360 thousand. sites needed to be examined due to the suspicion of contamination. 122 thousand places were tested, 148 thousand needed remediation. However, 14,000 of them were carried out. This shows just how acute and in need of global attention the problem is.

It happens that legal acts are not interconnected, which leads to the creation of loopholes in the law. Such an example was given by Sławomir Adamczyk from the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection in Katowice (it is worth mentioning that this year's REMEDy was attended by representatives of 15 out of 16 regional directorates. This shows that the administration is strongly open to the issue of remediation). He devoted his speech to the issue of anthropogenic embankments in the layers of the earth in Upper Silesia. This region is specific due to the intensive industrial activity conducted until recently. As a reminder - embankments are land created by human activity, built of natural land, displaced and mixed with waste.

One of the communes in the Śląskie Voivodeship reported pollution and applied for a decision establishing a remediation plan for the area where the waste was used in accordance with the starost's decision, filling the old limestone excavation with coal waste and earth from excavations. Thus, one local government issued a decision based on the provisions on waste management, which collided with the protection of the earth's surface provided for in the Environmental Protection Act. It is not known how many such situations can be noted in Poland. Each of them is a potential threat of soil contamination.

Legislative imprecision may result in many undesirable, sometimes pathological situations.

During his speech, Rafał Hałabura from the Association Instytut Remediacji Terenów Polonszczone pointed to unclear issues of the requirement to test the land before an investment (for example, a development one). It turns out that as long as the contamination has not been identified, many investors do not commission the ground survey. The Rafał Hałabura Association, on the other hand, takes the position that, before commencing the project, the investor is obliged to address the problem of soil contamination for the investment, referring to the construction law and the provision that the investment project should have geotechnical conditions for foundation established, which in accordance with the relevant the regulation should consist, inter alia, of on the assessment of the degree of soil contamination.

So much still depends on the maturity of the investor's awareness that clean ground means healthy people and a better environment. Rafał Hałabura encourages the use of the code of good practice, which indicates registers of contaminated areas, in which a potential investor can check a given land, so as not to hide behind ignorance. In this regard, the data for Poland are worrying. The NIK report from 2019 shows that in almost 1/3 of the inspected starosties there were historically polluted areas, where housing estates or public buildings were built.

Earth, water and air

Pollution is everywhere. And this is not a scare but a statement of the facts. Many of them, although present for years, have only recently been learned and classified. This is the case, for example, with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). They are defined by the US Environmental Protection Agency as chemicals that never decompose in the environment due to their extremely long and strong chemical bonds. These compounds do not occur naturally in nature. It is 100% human work. Where were they used? Virtually everywhere. Fire extinguishing foams, Teflon, clothing textiles, packaging, household chemicals, liquids for many industries. Paweł Kot from the i2 Analytical analytical laboratory told about them at REMEDy. Today, the expert noted, PFAS compounds are even in Arctic waters. They accumulate in the human body, in its liver and blood proteins. In plants - in underground parts, but recently also discovered in fruits. Therefore, they pose a serious threat to human life and health. In Poland, however, they are not covered by binding standards ...

There are many threats that legislation has not kept pace with. For example, air intrusion - evaporation of pollutants from the ground, which was discussed at REMEDy by André Chiaradia from Lion Environmental and Laurie Chilcote from Cox Colvin & Associates Inc., general partner of the conference. Volatile organic compounds and their sources in soil, i.e. most often petroleum, aromatic and chlorinated hydrocarbons, can be a source of pollution. Until now, the air has not been specifically tested, regulators in Poland and Europe are starting to look at the threat, the majority of those interested in the topic are international concerns. However, the perception of the risk of chemical vapor intrusion is increasing, so more specific risk guidance can be expected in the near future. All the more so because overseas, proven methods for measuring evaporative pollutants and the degree of vapor permeation, such as Vapor Pin devices, have already been developed.

Society supports and pressures

New methods of fighting pollution are constantly appearing on the market, the older ones are being improved (as long as they pass the test of time), and new ones - adopted with the interest of the industry. Sometimes remediation is needed not only in areas intended for e.g. a housing investment or a new park, but its task is to restore the quality of soil in industrial areas. For example, this is what Martynas Paškevičius from ESSPO deals with, which at the Lithuanian refinery in Mazeikiai uses microorganisms to clean the soil contaminated with oil products. Not only soil - microbes offered by ESSPO are useful for neutralizing railway sleepers contaminated with the above-mentioned compounds. These are treated as waste after the period of operation (unfortunately - often also as fuel ...). Every year, across Europe, it is one million tonnes of railway sleepers withdrawn from use.

All remediation methods have one thing in common - the goal is to be safe, contamination-free soil and groundwater.

The lack of an appropriate approach to pollution in the past today becomes a challenge for experts, regulators and scientists. Social pressure on decision-making and legislative bodies will certainly help in their fight. After all, we all want to live in a clean environment.