10.2.   Site registration and limitation of the right of disposal

Registration of contaminated sites is the activity undertaken in order to determine whether a given site is encompassed by the Contaminated Sites Act.

The first information on old waste disposal sites was obtained by the 1982 landfill survey. The latter was based on municipal archives as well as on information from persons who had worked at the sites in question.

Over the next years the registration work was undertaken very differently by the various Counties. In 1987 the Danish EPA issued a list of branches that were particularly under suspicion for having left contaminated sites behind them. Some of the Counties then went through old telephone directories and registered properties where there had been enterprises in the branches included on the Danish EPA’s list. Other Counties were more painstaking and undertook technical investigations in the field, especially drill cores, before registering a site as contaminated.

It has now been stipulated in a Statutory Order that the latter procedure is the correct approach, and that those Counties who only undertook "telephone directory" registration have to check that the sites so identified are in fact contaminated.

During the processing of cases the site owner in question shall have the opportunity to express his opinion. This follows from the rules on contradiction under Danish administrative law.

Under the 1990 Contaminated Sites Act, if a County decides to register a site as contaminated, the fact has to be recorded in the Register of Mortgages. This is a new requirement that was included in the Act in order to protect unwitting purchasers of such sites.

Registered contaminated sites per.1.1.1994 apportioned according to source of contamination

Once a property has been registered as a contaminated site, the owner’s right of disposal over it automatically becomes limited. The general rule is that the site must not be developed or its use changed. However, permission can be granted for a contaminated site to be used for a specific purpose if it can be proved that the use will not endanger persons or the environment, and that the use will not render future investigations or remedial measures impossible or considerably more expensive.

If an owner or user or building contractor discovers a site to be contaminated they have to inform the Municipality. This happens not infrequently during excavation work. In such cases construction work has to stop until the authorities and the developer reach an agreement as to what is to be done about the pollution; for both parties there is therefore a strong incentive to find a rapid solution.

Progress resulting from this system is reflected in the growing size of the contaminated land inventory, 2,700 sites now having been registered. In addition, the Counties suspect a further 4,500 sites to be contaminated, and when the investigations have been completed a large part of them will undoubtedly be included on the inventory. Since there are still large areas of old industrial districts that have not yet come under the scrutiny of the authorities, the final inventory is expected to number approx. 10,000 contaminated sites.

The original idea was that the authorities were to establish a complete picture of the problem in order to start the clean-up process where the need was greatest. From the technical point of view there was nothing wrong with that strategy.

Registered contaminated sites per.1.1.1994 apportioned according to current site usage

However, the reaction of the real estate market had not been taken into account: The greater the number of sites that are registered, the greater the number of owners that lose a lot of money. The average Danish contaminated site costs DKK 2.5 million to remediate. This means that the owners of the 2,700 registered sites have become more than DKK 6,000 million poorer. Only few owners can look forward to having remediation undertaken by the public authorities in the not too distant future. To this should be added the fact that site owners often feel the loss as soon as the authorities start to focus their attention on the site. Under the Freedom of Information Act the County lists become open to the public as soon as they have been examined by a second party, for example by a municipal building administration department.

Because of the reaction of the real estate market, the tempo at which contaminated sites are being registered has been reduced considerably.