Too hazardous to handle

Are you involved in a project where contaminated soil is going off site? If so, we've got some rather nasty news for you. From mid-July it's going to cost you up to seven times more to get it into a landfill. It gets worse: changes in legislation mean that there are now only a handful of sites nationwide licensed to handle your waste.

Up until 16 July, there are 240 landfills able to take hazardous material. After that, at most, there will be 15, and not all of them will take contaminated soil. None are planned for the South East or Wales (see diagram).

These changes are down to the 1999 EU Landfill Directive, which bans landfill sites from taking a mixture of hazardous and non-hazardous materials from 16 July. In the short-term, the impact of the directive is likely to be an increase in flytipping. Longer-term the costs and risks attached to brownfield sites is likely to leave them undeveloped.

Developers can be wary of these sites as it is says Phil Kirby, managing director of SecondSite Property, which manages all National Grid Transo's old sites. Kirby also sits on the government's Hazardous Waste Forum, which was set up last year to look at some of the problems the directive might cause. "The more restrictions you place on a site, the less attractive it becomes to developers. You end up with derelict sites in city areas," Kirby says.

This doesn't appear to sit well with the Deputy Prime Minister's plans for vast new communities built on brownfield land in the South East.

The aim of the directive is to force people to stop dumping and start treating. And that has to be a good thing. The amount of waste coming out of England and Wales has doubled over the past decade according to the Environment Agency. We produced 5.08 million tonnes of hazardous waste in 2002.

Dig-and-dump disposal
When it comes to hazardous waste, construction and demolition waste accounted for 59% of that going to landfill. The reason for that is clear. Why would anyone choose a more expensive and sometimes more uncertain method of treating contaminated land, such as soil washing or encapsulation when dig and dump is cheaper? The prices have been so low that it often doesn't make economical sense to sort the good from the bad; just send it all to landfill.

"Trying to get environmentally better options to dig and dump has been difficult because of the cost," says Arup director Peter Braithwaite, who heads up the firm's environmental consultancy. "What is happening now is that the cost of landfill is being raised to at or above that of remediation treatments."

Barry Menzies, technical director for Erith Group (which has a contaminated land division), estimates that the cost per tonne of landfilling hazardous material will go up from between £6 to £10 to between £30 and £70. Landfill tax is also rising. It went from £1 per tonne to £15 per tonne in April this year, and will rise again in £3 increments from April 2005 until it reaches £35 per tonne.

Even if you can pay the additional cost, there is no guarantee that there will be space, as each hazardous site is licensed to take a limited amount of waste. The Hazardous Waste Forum estimates there will up to 3.8m tonnes of hazardous waste without a home each year.

The more restrictions you place on a site, the less attractive it becomes to developers

Phil Kirby, Secondsite

Just what is hazardous waste? Well up until now, it has been known as 'special' waste. It's being renamed to bring us into line with Europe. There are some complicated definitions in European documents, but for construction it probably means contaminated soil and materials such as adhesives, asbestos, CFC, treated timber and resins. Fluorescent tubes, TVs, batteries and computer monitors are now considered to be hazardous, which could lead to a build-up of such items in lay-bys nationwide.

Unusable land
How do you know if soil is contaminated? At the moment, it is enough to do what you normally do, that is, conduct a site investigation to discover the concentrations of materials such as hydrocarbons, cyanide and arsenic. But from July 2005 we will have to fall in line with Europe, using tests based on what leaches out with water. And that's yet another potential expense.

Additional costs will hit any hazardous waste going to landfills, because the directive also says that all material must go through 'pre-treatment' either to reduce its quantity, reduce its hazardous nature, make it easier to handle or enhance its recovery. Hauliers will have to demonstrate that their material has been treated in line with the landfill operator's licence.

So what can a developer do with its contaminated land? There are several technologies around for treating different sorts of nasties. They fall into four categories: biological, where microbes are encouraged to munch up the contaminants; physical such as soil washing; stabilisation which involves mixing something into the soil which prevents the contaminants leaching out; and thermal such as steam injection.

However, there are complications here too. Because as soon as you dig up contaminated soil to treat it, you have created waste, and therefore need the necessary licences to deal with it. To date, the Environment Agency has been slow to issue mobile plant licenses to waste operators who want to offer remediation techniques, although Braithwaite says this situation is slowly improving.

Another problem is who is going to treat your soil. There are firms in the UK and Europe which offer a variety of remediation techniques, but their workload has been small due to the economic advantages of dig and dump. The fear is that there won't be the capacity to cope. Menzies reckons it will be three to five years before there is a balance in supply and demand.

Such firms were expecting to be inundated with work post July 16. But so far that doesn't seem to be the case. CM spoke to three firms, none of which reported a sudden boom in enquiries. The reason for this is probably a lack of awareness in the industry.

Menzies, warns that there will be 'chaos' after July 16 as people realise that dig-and-dump is no longer an option. Clients could be facing unexpected costs. Some planning permissions, for example, are based on buildings having basements for carparking - so it's either cough up or re-submit the planning application.

"The industry is not geared up for this," says Braithwaite. "Many developers are not aware of what the impact will be."