The Depreciation Protection Act protects home owners irrespective of whether the pollution is old or more recent. No distinction is made here because the real estate market reacts in exactly the same way whether the pollution occurred before or after 1976.
However, the Act only protects a home owner if he is "innocent". If he himself has caused the pollution - for example as a result of having run a small business on the premises - he is not entitled to help. The same applies if he knew about the pollution at the time of purchase and therefore obtained the property cheaply. If the home owner pays his site owners fee, then the public authorities will help by remediating the site within 6 months. The site owners fee is DKK 40,000 at the beginning, but then falls if the home owner waits. After 10 years it has fallen to DKK 15,000. The site owners fee is an expression of the risk that the home owner has to bear himself, and it serves to ensure that the arrangement is not used more than strictly necessary. The home owner can also chose to wait until such time as the public clean-up programme gets around to remediating the site in the normal course of events. The site owners fee can therefore be considered as the price of jumping the queue.
Another potential solution to the problem is that the State purchase all homes on contaminated sites. However, this has been dismissed in Denmark on the grounds that it would only result in payments being made to the owner and mortgage holders, without any environmental improvement for the money. Nonetheless, the Depreciation Protection Act does provide the possibility for the public authorities to take over the property if remediation would be irrational.
The Act has been in force since 1 September 1993 but so far only a minor part of the approx. 700 home owners that fulfil the conditions have requested assistance. It is estimated that with time, as additional contaminated sites are discovered, more than 2,000 home owners will become entitled to help.
The Act has fulfilled its political function though, namely to restore
calm on the question of "trapped" home owners.