Soil Sanitation of Industrial Sites: Cluster Concept and Consensus

Abstract

In the last decade, environmental protection was extended to soil and groundwater. Recently, it is becoming clear that soil remediation expenditures for the next fifty years may become of the order of the expenditure for construction and maintenance of sewer systems, i.e. 0.2% of the Gross National Product, mainly at the cost of industry which will be forced to remediate its former and present sites. The main problem is how to integrate the new legal requirements into the available budgets of the individual firms. In this paper it is argued that local consensus between private and public companies and the local authorities based on a long term (geohydrological) “cluster approach”, the “standstill principle” and the “rational remediation option” is the most cost-effective way to eliminate short and long term-risks,to restore the soil environment and to provide simultaneously a multifunctional (stand-by) protection, monitoring, warning and remediation network. This approach may create a profitable market for the development of specific new treatment and monitoring technologies and equipment.