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Redegørelse om jordforurening 2000

Summary and conclusions

The Contaminated Soil Act entered into force on 1 January 2000 and consolidates all legislation on soil contamination.

This report is the Deposit Council’s yearly report to the Minister for the Environment, presenting the concerted efforts to combat soil contamination.

Following the first year of administration under the Contaminated Soil Act, the current status is:

A total of more than 8,000 sites have been identified and listed with the regional councils. A total of 5,293 sites have been listed at knowledge level 2 (established soil contamination), and 1,770 have been listed at knowledge level 1 (knowledge of activities that are able to cause soil contamination). Furthermore, the local councils have reported 1,170 sites to the regional councils, but the sites have not yet been formally have listed.

A total of 532 sites were listed at knowledge level 2 in 2000. Thus, the total number of sites listed at knowledge level 2 amounts to 5,293, corresponding to an increase of 353 sites during 2000. A total of 179 sites were cancelled from the lists in 2000. The average size of the new listed areas is only one quarter of the previously listed areas.

Contamination originates from a wide range of sources. Petrol stations, service stations, and other activities involving oil/petrol, together with dry-cleaning establishments make up the largest groups of listing at knowledge level 2 in 2000.

Areas with diffuse contamination have only been listed to a limited extent so far.

The regional councils’ prioritisation of the activities listing, supplementary investigations, and remediation has taken place in accordance with the Contaminated Soil Act, i.e. in the special target areas: areas with special drinking water interests; water abstraction areas of common water supply plants; and areas with housing, children's institutions, or public playgrounds. This is satisfactory.

There is an almost equal distribution between listings of areas with housing, etc. and areas listed because of the risk of conflicting drinking water interests. A total of 43 per cent of the areas listed in 2000 were used for housing, children's institutions, or public playgrounds, 29 per cent were areas with special drinking water interests, and 18 per cent were areas with drinking water interests.

After a drop in 1999, the number of remediations funded by the regional councils seems to have returned to the same level as in 1997-98. The regional councils have reported that a total of 89 remediations were started in 2000. The distribution between housing and drinking water interests with regard to remediation priorities is more or less even. However, there is a slight imbalance in favour of housing, etc., primarily because the City of Copenhagen has carried out many remediations at children's institutions.

Applications under the Land Depreciation Programme for Homeowners, etc. have remained high in 2000. Payments of DKK 75.3 million have been approved. As at 31 December 2000 82 applications were pending, representing a total amount of DKK 44.6 million.

The evaluation of the Land Depreciation Programme was completed in the summer of 2001. The main conclusion of the evaluation was that the Programme has fulfilled its objectives: a satisfactory number of cases have been processed, and a significant number of land-use conflicts involving contaminated sites have been resolved.

Through the Contaminated Soil Act, the responsibilities of the local councils have increased. The local councils have thus been given new tasks in connection with notifications of soil transport and supervision of the duty to take action. Moreover, their powers have been extended in connection with orders, consultancy, and assistance to regional councils with listing.

An estimated total of at least 900 remediations were completed in 2000. Of these, 124 were funded by the public sector, 297 were completed under special schemes, primarily the Danish Oil Industry's Association for Remediation of Retail Sites, while the remainder were voluntary remediations or ordered remediations that were financed privately. Total expenditure for soil contamination is estimated at DKK 596 million.

Expenditure incurred by regional authorities is increasing, because funding by regional councils has increased from 1995 to 2000.

The total amount of soil cleaned up and deposited is estimated at 535,000 tonnes. However, there is great uncertainty regarding the amounts, types and final disposal sites, and soil from roads is not included. The Contaminated Sites Council has therefore decided to start a project under the "Technology Programme for Soil and Groundwater Contamination" with a view to clarifying these parameters.

In 2000, the local councils continued their theme reports on water abstraction drillings. Of the 72 drillings closed in 2000, point sources were mentioned as the source in one case, while area sources such as agriculture, forestry, etc. were mentioned as sources in 25 per cent of the cases.

The Deposits Council has assessed that the data on soil contamination could be improved in a number of cases. In order to improve the data, including uniform data to ensure comparability, the regional councils, in cooperation with the local councils and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, have prepared a data model for soil contamination. This model is expected to provide the basis for data on contaminated soil from 2003 onwards. The model will be used as a basis for the design of the regional councils' and to a certain extent the local councils' administrative databases on contaminated soil, and thus provide a foundation for notifications to the Deposits Council. The data model for soil contamination will be the basis for the design of a web-application with regard to the data on soil contamination.

After the first year of administration of the Soil Contamination Act, only limited experience has been gathered on how the Act is working. The Deposits Council believes that it is necessary to gather more experience before it will be able to issue recommendations on areas that require initiatives. The Council expects that sufficient experience will have been gathered in a year, enabling it to make recommendations for the future development of the administration of the soil contamination area.