The document includes the current situation of Basque soils, the actions carried out and the challenges for 2030.
The Basque Government has published the ‘Environmental Profile Euskadi 2020. Contaminated soils’, a document that gathers the work carried out in Euskadi regarding contaminated soils and how the problem of these has been tackled from its legislative beginnings in 1994 to the present day. The profile sets out the challenges that both the administration and companies must face from now on in order to achieve an optimal management of potentially contaminated soil, designing the new soil protection strategy 2030 of the Basque Country.
Marta González, responsible for the northern area of LITOCLEAN, knows in depth the new regulations and documents published on contaminated soils and highlights the aspects to be taken into account in this ‘Environmental Profile Euskadi 2020’.
The first of these is the picture it takes of the current situation of soils in Basque territory, in which it is stated that the main potentially polluting sector is that of industrial facilities smaller than one hectare and the compounds that are mostly found as pollutants are TPH, heavy metals and PAHs. “Special attention should be paid to the fact that a high percentage of these sites are located in riverside areas or very close to it and many of them near or within natural protected areas, which is additional risk receptors to study and mitigate,” explains Marta González. The document also points out that in a third of the cases in which soil disturbance was identified, this was linked to groundwater disturbance, which for González shows “the inseparable relationship between soils and groundwater” and that “groundwater, together with soils, is a natural resource whose good quality must be protected”.
Another observation that deserves special attention is the data on soil contamination. Eighty-three percent of the finalized soil quality declarations are classified as disturbed or contaminated, and 65% of these sites currently have control and monitoring measures in place, allowing the evolution of their quality to be managed.
The environmental profile also talks about the remediations executed in Euskadi, being the excavation of contaminated soils and its subsequent disposal in landfill the most common, something that does not converge with the objectives of sustainable development 2030 nor with the new Royal Decree 646/2020 of 7, which regulates the disposal of waste by landfill, as Marta González explains: “Currently some previous treatment must be performed to reduce the amount of waste to be deposited in landfill, as well as its dangerousness”. This is evidence of the paradigm shift in the soil decontamination sector and the commitment to sustainable in situ remediation. “It is a challenge for the new soil protection strategy 2030 of Euskadi that would mean, on the one hand, a significant reduction in the volume of land managed to landfill and, on the other hand, the recovery of the soil resource,” argues González.
In short, it is a document that provides updated information on the quality of soils in a territory and, consequently, allows for more effective policies for the prevention, mitigation and reduction of the risks posed to the health of people and ecosystems by contaminated soils.
