Directory UMM :Data Elmu:jurnal:E:Environmental Management and Health:Vol10.Issue5.1999:

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Protecting Europe's groundwater: legislative

approaches and policy initiatives

Phyllis B. Judd

Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire, UK

C. Paul Nathanail

Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire, UK

Introduction

The focus of this paper is quite broad to be addressed comprehensively in this relatively brief document. However, this paper is in fact based on an in-depth, long-term study re-cently completed by the authors. That study involved compiling 17 research papers de-scribing contaminated land policies in the 15 European Community member States (ex-cluding Luxembourg), the USA and Canada.

At present, in most member States, groundwater is protected as a source of drinking water. Groundwater reserves are under pressure from over-exploitation and in some member States, water shortages are already occurring. Furthermore, the ecologi-cal consequences of groundwater pollution are still poorly understood and would likely provide additional motives for groundwater protection (Fergusonet al., 1998a). This study provides an overview of groundwater legis-lation currently enacted and policies pro-posed and/or in effect in the member States.

This paper is structured into several topic areas. The next section, European Community Directives, sets the framework and requirements for member States in terms of EC legislative requirements and policy objectives regarding groundwater and related areas. The following sections describe pollution prevention legislation and policies, site registration/classification schemes and the role of risk assessment. An overview is provided for each section, followed by specific examples from the member States.

Two publications arising out of the Eur-opean Community Concerted Action on Con-taminated Sites in Europe (CARACAS) provide further details on approaches to risk assessment in Europe (Fergusonet al., 1998a) and policy developments in European Com-munity member States (Fergusonet al., 1998b).

European Community Directives

The European Community plays an impor-tant role in developing environmental policy throughout the EC on an integrated basis, controlling and preventing pollution in all member States. The EC Treaty (as amended by the Single European Act 1986 and the Treaty on European Union 1993) establishes the aims of the EC; it is the primary source of EC law and from it the EC institutions derive their power to enact secondary legislation (Wolf and White, 1997).

While only EC Directives are of direct relevance to this paper, it is appropriate to differentiate between EC Regulations and Directives, as follows:

. EC Regulations are directly applicable to

all member States and can be used to ensure that the law is exactly the same throughout the EC. Since they are binding in their entirety, there is no need for member States to take further action to implement the Regulations for them to be in effect (Wolf and White, 1997).

. Similarly, EC Directives are generally

applicable to all member States. However, while they are binding regarding the results to be achieved, they differ from Regulations in that the choice and means of implementation are at the discretion of the individual State (Wolf and White, 1997).

As the majority of EC environmental ``legis-lative acts'', including those governing groundwater, take the form of Directives, it is to be expected that there would be significant divergences amongst member States in their approaches to managing groundwater. This is in fact the case; these differences will be identified and demonstrated in the balance of this paper.

The Groundwater Directive

The Groundwater Directive 80/68/EEC aims to prevent the pollution of groundwater by certain substances, and to reduce or elim-inate any damage caused by pollution (Wolf and White, 1997). The Directive in-cludes two Lists, derived from the Dangerous The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

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Environmental Management and Health

10/5 [1999] 303±309

#MCB University Press [ISSN 0956-6163] Keywords

Groundwater, EC, Directives, Pollution

Abstract

There have been many positive recent developments in the groundwater legislation and poli-cies of the 15 European Commu-nity member States (excluding Luxembourg), as the States re-cognise the importance of imple-menting the EC Groundwater Directive, The Integrated Pollution Prevention Control Directive and other relevant EC directives. All member States recognise the im-portance of protecting ground-water and most have enacted legislation and/or established po-licies to do so. However, there are significant variations in their ap-proaches; these variations are reflected in their approaches to site registration and classification schemes. Similarly, some member States do not yet have policies that specify explicit risk assess-ment procedures, while others have formal risk assessment pro-cedures in place for registering, classifying and prioritising sites.

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Substances into Water Directive discussed below. List I includes exceptionally toxic or persistent substances such as organohalo-gens, organophosphorous compounds, mer-cury, lead, known carcinogens and many pesticides; these are to be prevented from entering groundwaters. List II includes many other heavy metals, cyanide, ammonia and other substances; these are to be limited by a consent system (Ball and Bell, 1997).

The integrated pollution prevention control directive

In September 1996, the European Council adopted EC Directive 96/61/EC (OJ No L257/ 6) which came into effect on 30 October 1996; it requires all member States to establish systems of Integrated Pollution Prevention Control (IPPC). The purpose of the Directive is to establish systems of IPPC for the polluting ``activities'' which are listed in Annex 1 of the Directive; the polluting ``activities'' are to be controlled to prevent or minimise pollution of any environmental medium. Member States are required to implement the Directive in 1999 (Wolf and White, 1997).

Other relevant EC Directives

The first EC water Directive, Directive 76/ 464EEC on Dangerous Substances into Water is the major Directive which aims to control dangerous substances released into the aquatic environment. Its aim is to reduce or eliminate specified dangerous substances from water. The Directive is a framework directive that has subsequently been ex-panded upon by a number of so-called Daughter Directives, including the Ground-water Directive (Wolf and White, 1997).

Other relevant EC Directives include Di-rectives 75/440 EEC and 80/778/EEC on drinking water, Directive 76/160/EEC on bathing waters, Directive 78/659/EEC on waters for freshwater fish and Directive 79/ 923/EEC on shell fish waters (Wolf and White, 1997)

Pollution prevention legislation

and policy

Groundwater pollution prevention legisla-tion and policies in the European Commu-nity member States are inextricably linked to the States' contaminated land legislation and policies. All member States recognise the importance of establishing and effecting policies to manage contaminated land; simi-larly, the member States recognise the im-portance of protecting groundwater,

especially that which is used for water supply.

Some member States have enacted specific legislation and developed regulations that establish requirements for protecting groundwater; in other member States these requirements are not explicit but may be readily inferred from other legislation and regulations. In some cases, while the need is recognised, it is only very recently that any actions have been taken to address the problem.

The following examples demonstrate some of the more common legislative and policy initiatives as well as the variations in approaches:

. In Ireland, the Environmental Protection

Agency provides guidance and assistance to local authorities. The agency is re-sponsible for issuing Integrated Pollution Control licences for scheduled activities. Preventive measures are included in the licences to ensure that contamination of soil or groundwater does not occur; mon-itoring provisions are also included, where appropriate. Furthermore, EPA requires the licensee to make proposals for the remediation of the soil or ground-water and to provide a time-scale for carrying out the remedial work (Leech, 1994).

. In Austria, the Law for the Clean-up of

Contaminated Sites (ALSAG) defines con-taminated sites as disposal and industrial sites, together with soil and groundwater resources which they may have polluted, which are believed ± on the basis of results of risk assessment ± to pose considerable threat to public health or to the environ-ment. The definition does not include land polluted in connection with agricultural or comparable applications. Groundwater is categorised into that which is important for water-supply and that which is not exploited (Schamann, 1998).

. The Netherlands generally has a high

water table and is dependent on ground-water for 80 percent of its drinking supply (Christie and Teeuw, 1996). Consequently, the prevention of soil pollution and re-storation of contaminated land are part of an integrated environmental policy for the protection of soil, including ground-water and sediments (Denneman, 1997). The history of soil protection policy in The Netherlands dates back to 1962 when the Minister of Social Affairs and Public Health established a scientific committee to investigate the necessity for establish-ing legal measures for groundwater pro-tection; it recommended that legal measures should be taken to protect the

Phyllis B. Judd and C. Paul Nathanail

Protecting Europe's groundwater: legislative approaches and policy initiatives

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soil as well, particularly near ground-water extraction wells used for drinking water (Visser, 1993).

. Greece has a few major plains (e.g.

Thessaly, Central Macedonia) where in-tensive agriculture is practised with ex-tensive use of fertilisers and pesticides. The extensive use of such substances has significantly increased the contamination of underground aquifers in the area and presents one of the major issues of groundwater contamination in Greece. Joint Ministerial Decision 16190/1335/ 1997, ``Measures for the Protection of Sur-face Waters and Groundwater from Ni-trate Pollution due to Agricultural Activities'', was just issued in 1997 to address these problem areas (Kavvadas, 1998).

Site registration/classification

schemes

The term ``site registration'' refers to the means by which EC member States identify and develop lists or registers of contaminated sites. The list of sites is then prioritised based on some type of preliminary classification and decision-making scheme that allows relative assessments to be made. This ap-proach is similar to that of an early model, the Hazard Ranking System (HRS) developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency in the 1980s, as part of the Superfund Programme. The HRS provided a relative assessment of potentially contaminated sites using a point system (Fergusonet al., 1998a). Because of the need for making consistent decisions covering large numbers of con-taminated sites, many EC member States use priority-setting approaches of one sort or another to classify sites. The evaluation criteria commonly used to prioritise con-taminated sites include a determination of the distance to groundwater and aquifer sensitivity and the existence of drinking waterwells/service water wells/drinking water plant (Fergusonet al., 1998a).

Member States' approaches to site regis-tration/classification vary significantly. In some member States, the approach is forma-lised while in others it is much less well developed. Furthermore, in some States, the process is undertaken at the national gov-ernment level while in others it is a function of regional or local jurisdictions.

The following examples illustrate some of the variations in approaches to site registra-tion/classification:

. In Finland, a list of potentially

contami-nated sites was compiled under

``SAMASE'', a nation-wide project in 1990-92. Most of the information was collected by regional environmental authorities such as waste management, water, public health, construction, and regional plan-ning authorities. Information was ex-tracted from an extensive selection of sources including permits, announce-ments, chemical and oil accident reports, and industrial registers; other documents concerning potentially polluting activities or events were also screened (Puolanne and Assmuth, 1997).

The data collected were entered into a database. Sites with potential or known risks that could adversely affect the en-vironment or public health were visited and those considered to be most harmful were preliminarily investigated and as-sessed. The survey of contaminated soil sites has been continued by the Regional Environment Centres in connection with the need to prioritise sites for clean-up programmes (Puolanne and Assmuth, 1997).

Suspected contaminated sites are clas-sified according to risk class, as follows: Risk class 01 are those sites where con-tamination is estimated to be significant; risk class 02 are those sites where minor contamination is possible, but contami-nant migration is not probable; risk class 03 are those sites where significant con-tamination and contaminant migration are suspected; and risk class 04 are those sites where significant contamination and contaminant migration are verified by investigation (Puolanne and Assmuth, 1997).

. In France, in a December 1993 ministerial

circular, the prefects were informed of the Government's intention to set up a tional register of polluted sites. The na-tional policy that evolved focuses on the inventory, selection, and treatment of sites suspected to be contaminated through former industrial uses (Darmendrail, 1997).

Currently, three complementary meth-ods of inventory are being used:

± establishment or declaration of pollu-tion (accidents, fortuitous discovery); ± systematic study of active sites,

parti-cularly for some priority sectors; and ± regional historical studies enabling old

industrial sites, where industrial ac-tivity has caused potential pollution, to be inventoried (Darmendrail, 1997).

. The system of selection uses a series of

screens, each with increasingly more stringent criteria. Each screen corre-sponds to a diagnostic level requiring

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further and more complex technical and scientific investigations. The first screen aims to define sites for priority studies using only documentary criteria; these criteria concern primarily the nature of the activity, its importance and the vul-nerability of the site environment. The second screen consists of an initial diag-nosis (or ``soil study'') and a simplified assessment of the risks to classify the sites into three categories: sites needing further investigation and detailed risk assessment; sites ``under surveillance'' for which a monitoring system should be defined and implemented; and ``common-place'' sites, which can be used for specific purposes without further investigations or work (Darmendrail, 1997).

. In England and Wales, Section 143 of the

Environmental Protection Act 1990 pro-vided for the registration of sites pre-viously or currently used for a wide range of different contaminative uses, defined as any use of land which may cause it to be contaminated with noxious substances. However, in the face of continuing oppo-sition, in 1993 the Government withdrew its proposals for establishing registers of contaminated land (Hester and Harrison, 1997).

The Environment Act 1995 rescinded Section 143, but some local authorities may, in the interim, have compiled some of the information which they would have needed. Furthermore, some local authori-ties have been developing strategies to identify potentially contaminated land in advance of Part IIa of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 being implemented (Nathanail and Earl, 1997).

. While Portugal does not yet have a

specific administrative framework for dealing with contaminated sites, issues related to contaminated soil are of in-creasing importance. Sufficient informa-tion is currently available to make a preliminary identification and character-isation of those sites related to existing industrial areas and uncontrolled waste deposits (Lima, 1998).

The role of risk assessment

In the context of contaminated land in Europe, risk assessment has mainly been used to set priorities, which means thatrisk is not treated as an absolute quantitative measure describing the environmental or human health impact of soil and ground-water contamination but as an indicator that is used for comparative purposes only. A

better term for risk-based priority setting is comparative risk analysis.Risk assessmentis the scientific process addressing the informal questions ``How risky is it?'', or ``What is the chance of a bad outcome?'' (Fergusonet al., 1998a).

In most States, groundwater is protected as a resource that should remain pure, as implied by the EC Groundwater Directive. There may be situations, however, where the application of this principle in groundwater protection has become impossible due to the extent and persistence of contamination. In these situations, a more risk-oriented ap-proach may be used (Fergusonet al., 1998a).

As of this time, some member States do not yet have policies for contaminated land that specify explicit risk assessment procedures. Other States are starting to develop formal procedures for assessment and remediation of contaminated land. In States where such procedures already exist, risk assessment is mostly used for registering, classifying and prioritising sites (Fergusonet al., 1998a).

Variations in current approaches to risk assessment in the member States are de-monstrated by the following examples:

. In Sweden, risk assessments of

contami-nated sites are comprehensive evalua-tions of the toxicity of the contaminants to human health and the environment; the amounts and concentrations of contami-nants at the site; the present location of the contaminants and the conditions al-lowing further migration to the sur-roundings; and the sensitivity of man and the environment in the area surrounding the site (Norman, 1997).

The assessment focuses on both present and future situations and includes soil, groundwater, sediment and surface water. There are three stages of risk assessment. At the first stage, risk classification, sites are classified into one of four risk classes, based on detailed desk studies. At the next stage, a simplified risk assessment is performed, based on generic guideline values; the purpose of this risk assess-ment is to understand the risks associated with the present situation prior to reme-dial work and to assess acceptable levels of contamination after remediation is completed. At the third stage, a detailed risk assessment is performed, based on site-specific values, if generic guideline values are not applicable to the site or if no generic guideline values exist (Norman, 1997).

The Environmental Protection Agency intends to carry out most of the inventory work within a five-year period commen-cing from 1996, to establish general

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guideline values for the most common contaminants and to further develop risk assessment methodologies (Hasselsten, 1996).

. England and Wales have adopted a risk

management approach to the assessment and management of potentially contami-nated land. It uses a source-pathway-receptor linkage (or target) approach and aims to restore sites for a specific so-called ``fitness for purpose'' (Nathanail, 1996). Phased assessments are conducted to en-sure effort is focused on minimising potential risks to end users, structures and the environment, without entailing excessive costs (Nathanail, 1996). Land is assessed to determine the possibility of harm to human health and the environ-ment through the use of appropriate technical information. Information sources include the CLR reports such as CLR 1, which provides a framework for the assessment of impact of contaminated land on controlled waters, and CLR 6, which provides prioritisation and cate-gorisation procedures for sites that may be contaminated. Additional sources in-clude the Construction Industry Research and Information Association's (CIRIA) series of technical guidance documents on contaminated land (Nathanail, 1997).

. In The Netherlands, sites on the Dutch

Inventory of Contaminated Sites are prioritised according to their need for remediation. Since nearly all of the drinking water is derived from ground-water, groundwater protection has a very high priority. Standards for groundwater resources that are currently or will be used for drinking water, are based on drinking water standards. Generally, a lower priority is given to surface water (Martinet al., 1996). Among sites present-ing threats to groundwater, highest priority is given to sites situated within areas designated as ``areas of special interest for water supply'', which are areas that are intended to supply the highest quality drinking water (Edelgaard, 1997).

. In Belgium, the three autonomous regions

differ in their approaches to environmen-tal issues; this is reflected in how each manages contaminated land. In the Flem-ish Region, the methodology for the deri-vation of soil standards uses five land-use classes with specific risk groups defined. The land use classes are nature, agricul-tural area, residential area, recreational area, and industrial area; with the excep-tion of nature, all of the land use classes have human beings as the major risk

group. The methodology for the derivation of soil standards for these land use classes is based on the use of an exposure model. The soil standards for groundwater are equal to those in the drinking water quality guidelines. Serious threat to hu-man health is evaluated by use of a risk assessment model (Cornelis, 1997).

In the Walloon Region, consideration was given to the maximum number of ``identifiable'' sites in order to produce an exhaustive inventory of ``potential risk'' sites, based on their past uses and the characteristics of the local environment. Sites were identified as those of ``highest priority'' either because they presented a high risk of contamination or because they were already targeted for specific redevelopment schemes (Miller, 1996). A system for the classification of ``dumps'' on the basis of risks for water pollution, human health, and ecosystems is being developed. The ranking is performed on the basis of a checklist that considers the source (location characteristics), the vec-tors (transport) and the risk groups. The model is partly approved and is now validated (Miller, 1996).

The Brussels Capital Region does not yet have a scheme for classifying sites (Van Dyck, 1998).

. In Italy, a risk-based tiered procedure for

the decision-making process relative to contaminated land remediation has been outlined. The procedure envisages two simplified risk-based assessments, generic and site-specific, as tools for site-screen-ing and for definsite-screen-ing clean-up objectives. Different receptors, land uses and expo-sure pathways are considered through validated exposure/migration models. Protection of groundwater, as a drinking water resource, is accomplished by defin-ing standards as well as appropriate soil values (Quercia, 1997).

Conclusion

As demonstrated, there are currently major differences in EC member States' approaches to managing groundwater resources. How-ever, there have been encouraging recent developments in that progress had been made in recognising the importance of protecting the resource and in implementing applicable legislation and policy initiatives. Success in protecting and cleaning-up groundwater is a long-term project that will benefit from the continued co-ordination among member States.

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There are several areas regarding envir-onmental groundwater protection that re-quire further research. For example, contaminated land and groundwater risk assessment is still underpinned largely by scientific research done for other purposes. Further research is needed on the nature of contaminated land and its impact on water resources and the relationship between water contamination and fitness for use which specifies the conditions for sustain-able land use (Fergusonet al., 1998, a,b).

Additional research is also required for methods to predict whether soil pollution will, in the long run, migrate to groundwater, and to what extent groundwater pollution will disperse and affect abstracted or surface water quality. Current practice is mostly based on a geohydrological model. A broader scientific basis including geological, geo-technical and probabilistic approaches may yield substantial improvements (Ferguson et al., 1998, a,b). Much of this research will also benefit from joint efforts by EC member States.

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(Phyllis, B. Judd is an Environmental Policy Consultant. She has worked extensively in both the public and private sectors in the USA as well as in academia in the UK. She can be contacted by e-mail on

Phyllis.Judd@ntu.ac.uk

C. Paul Nathanail is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemical, Environmental and Mining Engineering at the University of Nottingham and is Course Director of the MSc in Contaminated Land Management. E-mail: Paul.Nathanail@ nottingham.ac.uk)