The uncertain future of contaminated land in Spain.

AutorBernat Mullerat
PáginasvLex

The recent ecological disaster in Doana's National Park has increased the Government and the public opinion's concern for environmental protection. The release of a vast amount of hazardous waste close to Europe's largest nature reserve has caused a serious problem of contaminated land.

Indeed, the issue of contaminated land is one of the most controversial topics in environmental law. The aim is to provide legal measures to identify which properties are polluted and determine who is responsible for clean up and to what extent. However, the huge costs involved in clean up make governments and companies extraordinarily sensitive to the potential attachment of any liability. For that reason, the regulation of clean up liabilities for contaminated land draws the attention of landowners, developers, industry, financial institutions, insurance companies and greens.

The first comprehensive regulation of contaminated land took place in 1980 when the United States tackled the remediation of contaminated properties by passing the Superfund Act (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act 1980). This Act resulted in many never ending cost recovery actions among the potentially liable parties and also against the environmental authorities, but failed to meet its main purpose: the clean up of the most heavily contaminated properties.

Contaminated land in the European Union

In the European Union, the disparity of existing environmental liability regimes is such that may influence business decisions and, therefore, distort competition in the internal market. Thus, in 1989 the EU Commission issued a proposed Directive for Damage Caused by Waste to harmonize national environmental liability schemes. Such proposal met ferocious opposition from some Member States, industry and lending institutions. In response to such opposition, 1993 the EU Commission published a Green Paper on Remedying Environmental Damage for the purposes of discussion.

At present, the EU Commission is working on various alternatives for action at EU-level in connection with environmental liability. However, it is difficult to anticipate how and when will the EU take the next step towards harmonizing environmental liability.

New Regulation of Contaminated Land in Spain

In Spain contaminated land has not been regulated until a few weeks ago. Last April the Spanish Parliament passed a new Act on waste implementing the European Union's legislation on this matter and...

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