Romania’s strategy for the management of contaminated sites

Like many countries, Romania shares the challenge of dealing with the legacy of past industrial activities. A uniform and cost-effective approach to investigating and cleaning up contaminated sites is one way to address the environmental and health issues. Therefore, the Romanian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development decided to develop a national strategy to manage such sites. With World Bank finance in place, Royal Haskoning was selected to manage the project.

In the first phase of the project the situation in Romania and existing strategies in EU countries were assessed. An outline for the Romanian strategy was drafted and agreed, covering three main components: legal and institutional, methodology and technical guidelines, and national inventory.

It was clear from work in other countries that the management of contaminated sites needs to be firmly embedded in the institutional framework. So a review of Romanian environmental legislation was carried out, with proposals prepared to bring it line with the agreed national strategy. The chosen methodology was then selected from a number of options in consultation with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and the National Environmental Protection Agency. “We started with a rough model for the methodology, from inventory to completion of corrective actions,” says Sjacco de Vos. “This was then developed in detail and the necessary technical guidelines were drafted. These contain standards and detailed instructions on investigations, risk assessments and corrective action planning. We also prepared a compendium on remediation and drilling techniques which can be used by the Romanian authorities.”

In order to enable the completion of a nationwide inventory of contaminated sites, an intranet-based inventory system was created which local environmental protection agencies are able to manage. The system enables a preliminary assessment of potentially contaminated sites and helps the environmental authorities to prioritise sites and invest in those that need urgent attention.

Working in collaboration
This project is the result of cooperation between the government, its agencies and the project team. Also, the presence of Royal Haskoning’s permanent office in Bucharest and its experienced environmental experts contributed to a successful implementation. The results of the project were presented at an international three-day seminar in Bucharest which was organised in cooperation with a government-to-government project between The Netherlands and Romania.

 

Contact: Sjacco de Vos
+31 (0)10 2865 512
s.devos@royalhaskoning.com

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