Czech Republic: Workshop Papers

Solving Ecological Damage in the Scope of Privatization

The amendment of Act No. 92/1992 on the conditions for transferring state property to other subjects stipulated that an evaluation of environmental liability must take place. This was implemented into privatization transactions then in progress and in this way, purchasers were protected from assuming unknown ecological liabilities. Since the law specified the scope of the required assessment in general terms, more specific details were issued in Government Decision No. 379/93, which included detailed methodological guidelines for ecological audits, including classification standards for assessment of soil and ground water pollution.

Further decisions of the government have specified the procedure in the following manner:

• Ecological damage on the site of a transferred property does not justify a discount in the purchase price.
• State compensation may be realized only in cases where damage includes pollution of ground water, soil, or results from hazardous waste landfill sites. It is subject to government approval and agreement between the NPF and the purchaser before privatization on the settlement of ecological liabilities. The maximum possible state grant is limited by the purchase price.
• A certified approval received from a competent institution, based on an environmental audit and risk analysis, is a condition for any form of compensation. A directive of the Ministry of Environment (MoE) charged the Czech Environment Inspectorate with this task.
• The costs incurred through the use of environmental auditors can also be compensated by the NPF.

The described method of granting financial resources for the remediation of past ecological damage belongs to the second stage of the nation's privatization process. Establishing liability for ecological damage and implementing solutions in other forms of property transfer, for example, in bankruptcy proceedings, has yet to be regulated.

Specific solutions for past ecological damage comprise three distinct stages:

• Risk evaluation of polluted mineral environments and setting appropriate target parameters for decontamination
• Drawing up a draft of the remediation procedure and otherwise preparing the project
• Realization itself, including a conclusive achievement of target parameters

Risk analysis is a completely new practice, whose generally defined contents allows those who undertake the task a certain degree of freedom in assessing and classifying the spread of future contamination. At present there are several proposals for developing a unified method. The following conclusions have been drawn from the results of the first 127 risk analyses conducted in the Czech Republic:

1. Even given the priority placed on the continued use of assessed industrial areas for identical or similar purposes, the negative impact of polluted soil is generally negligible from the perspective of dermal and respiratory contact.
2. Only in three cases were agricultural soils near industrial plants found to be contaminated.
3. Pollution of utilized water sources (for example, private wells) has been identified only in ten percent of all cases, and surface water quality has been negatively affected only in 7.1 percent. With regard to the nature of the pollution, the concentration level, and the number of affected persons, however, it was not possible to determine the correlation between the stated findings and the calculable damage to human health.

An evaluation of the risk analyses conducted thus far also shows that not all cases represent a sufficient basis for complete decontamination. Risk identification and the setting of a technical procedure generally differ in methodology. Further, it has been proven that in many cases it is desirable to set the target parameters only according to a risk estimate and to define them only during the decontamination itself; in other words, to do so in light of better information on soil and ground water contamination, and of the costs requisite to complete the decontamination. The key question in nearly all cases is the effect of decontamination on 'unsaturated' sites (i.e., those where water pollution is not an issue) and, also, its effect on sites where a main priority is the quality of ground water. Therefore it is most useful to proceed in phases in the case of more notable decontamination.

Regarding the utilized methods, although the Czech Republic's resources do not presently allow for the use of state-of-the-art technologies, their capacity is sufficient to ensure decontamination in a substantial majority of cases. Table 1 below provides an overview of the situation:

Table 1: Methods used in remediation of contaminated sites

	"In site" methods	"On site" methods
Soil	Venting Fixation Biodegradation Neutralization Cleaning with tensides	Landfill storage Biodegradation Fixation and subsequent landfill storage Thermic methods of cleaning
Ground water	Hydraulic methods Stripping Biodegradation Chemical methods	Springing Biodegradation Chemical methods
Landfill sites	Landfill coverage Surface isolation of a secured landfill	Extraction and storage Sealing walls

Undertaking the remediation of past ecological damage is a formidable task, although extensive projects have already been completed in the area of ground water protection. A rational procedure is at present based on the following principles:

• Achievement of the stipulated limits within a relatively short time frame
• Decontamination in the most economic manner available

The procedure followed by the state encountered some early difficulties, and the experience may be summarized as follows:

Even very detailed research into the pollution at the start does not exclude new findings during the course of decontamination, demanding corrections to subsequent procedures. The stipulated remediation procedures and their duration demand continuous objective control to determine whether the necessary level of effectiveness is being achieved and whether further work is necessary.

In the vast majority of cases, priority has also been accorded to the decontamination of 'unsaturated' sites, which can be ensured with much higher efficiency than can the decontamination of polluted ground water. Therefore one economic approach to decontamination consists of its division into stages defined by site and time frame, allowing for the possibility of revising the extent of the work and correcting the target parameters.

The present, incipient stage of planning and implementation of remedial measures to address past environmental damage will allow the determination of basic parameters which must in turn be transformed into a standard procedure and generally applied to all property transfers.