Environmental liability for contaminated land — towards a European consensus

Abstract

Land contamination 1 1 Contaminated land is any land which appears to the local authority in whose area it is situated to be causing or threatening to cause significant harm due to substances in, on, or under it and land causing or threatening to cause pollution of controlled waters due to substances in, on, or under it (S.78A (2) Environmental Protection Act 1990, inserted by S.57 Environment Act 1995). has often been accepted as an inevitable consequence of industrialisation (Williams, R., 1995, Paper presented to the 9th AESOP Congress), however, when land is contaminated this affects the market value of the site and presents problems in terms of the extent of civil liability for environmental damage and clean up. Different countries have different approaches to dealing with contaminated land, with no consensus approach across Europe. There is now increasing pressure being brought to bear on European member states to treat contamination with some degree of uniformity. This paper explores a number of differences in contaminated land policy together with the legal and policy developments at national and European levels and concludes that a European consensus on land contamination is very problematic but nevertheless important for long term land development across Europe.