State of the Contaminated Sites in Slovakia

State of the Contaminated sites in Slovakia Investment into Your Future During the years 2008 – 2010 Slovak Environmental Agency implemented the project „Regional Environmental Impact Assessment Studies of the Contaminated Sites in Selected Regions“ within the frame of Operational Programme Environment, forms a component of Priority Axis 4: Waste Management, Operational Objective 4.4: Solution of contaminated sites including their removal. Operational Programme Environment is a programme document of the Slovak Republic for the exploitation of European Union assistance for the environmental sector for the period of years 2007-2013. Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic is the donor. Preparing of publication „State of the Contaminated Sites in Slovakia“ is one of the activities of the project cofi nanced by Cohesion Fund of the Europa Union. The propagation and information to the public about state of the contaminated sites is objective of the publication. The comparison of the state-of-the-art contaminated sites in Europe and in Slovakia is a part of the publication and the result of the project „Systematic identifi cation of Contaminated Sites“, which was a base of the systematic solution of contaminated sites. Thereafter the project „Regional Environmental Impact Assessment Studies of the Contaminated Sites in Selected Regions“ is presented and new results of the project in sef-governing region are summarised. Further, presentation „Information System of the Contaminated sites“ and „Atlas of Remediation Methods for Contaminated sites“ are parts of the publication, too. List of Contents Contaminated sites represent a high risk for the environment and for the human health 3 Contaminated sites – state-of-the-art in Europe and in Slovakia 4 Systematic identifi cation of Contaminated sites in Slovakia 9 Regional Environmental Impact Assessment Studies of the Contaminated Sites in Selected Regions 11 Region Bratislava 14 Region Trnava 19 Region Nitra 24 Region Trenčín 28 Region Banská Bystrica 33 Region Žilina 38 Region Prešov 43 Region Košice 48 Information System of the Contaminated Sites 53 Atlas of Remediation Methods for Contaminated Sites 58 Slovak Environmental Agency Contaminated sites represent a high risk for the environment and for the human health The actual environmental legislation covers the protection of nearly all basic environmental compartments, including pollution prevention and deterioration of these compartments. Sustainable development principle is accepted as one of the most important principles of society development in Slovakia, similarly as in the other developed countries around the world. This means such a development that allows for meeting the needs of present generations without endangering the expectations of future generations for satisfaction of their needs. The right for favourable environment is laid down in the Article 44 of the Constitution of the Slovak Republic, saying: “everyone has the right for favourable environment, everyone is obliged to protect and develop the environment and cultural heritage, nobody is allowed to jeopardise nor deteriorate the environment and natural resources to a higher extent than defi ned by the law”. Unfortunately, the situation was diff erent in the past. The human activities were accompanied by huge waste dumps, heavy dark smoke, uncontrolled air, and water and soil pollution resulting in deterioration of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity and impaired human population health from the very beginning of the industrial production. The sites of industrial enterprises were often located in extremely vulnerable natural environment regardless the risk they posed to this environment and regardless of the fact that the society was depended on the drinking water resources from the same areas. Dangerous substances were routinely handled and they were directly or in- directly released into water, soil and rocks. Many of these substances were considered safe for a long period; however, toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic or other harmful properties were identifi ed thanks to the recently performed research activities. Application of such substances is banned at present, but they are persistent in the receiving environment for a long time, they con- taminate the individual environmental compartments and they are considered as real “time bombs” regarding the human population health and the environment. Contaminated sites de- scribed above are entitle contaminated sites at present. In addition to the areas of industrial enterprises, contaminated sites are related to high capacity agricultural enterprises, railway depots, harbours and airports, abandoned and buried landfills containing dangerous waste, unsecured pesticide storage sites, fuel storage and pumping sites, areas polluted by military forces, sites damaged by ore mining and many other activities accompanied by a long term uncontrolled handling of dangerous substances. Describing the contaminated sites, contaminated water, soil and rock environment, deteriorated ecosystems and impaired human health does not pose a great pleasure. However, a special edition publication is coming to your hands, by which we would like to offer you an overview of contaminated sites issues in the Slovak Republic and the European Union, to highlight the risks caused by the contaminated sites, and to emphasise the needs and also the possibilities of the stepwise elimination of such risks. Human health and life are too valuable to allow their jeopardising by processes and impacts that we are able to handle at present. Moreover, leaving the problem over the future generations due to the lack of financial resources, economical crisis or other reasons would resemble the behaviour of an ostrich. We should not forget that the biosphere, a part of which we are, is only a very tiny layer of the Earth that would be only 5 millimetres thick when it is spread evenly over the whole surface of our planet. In the global dimensions it means that all substances that are introduced by humans to the biosphere will - sooner or later - come back via the natural cycling of substances, regardless we want it or not. Thus, when we are talking about waste or contaminated sites and related contamination, it would be naive to consider that these burdens are not any more - or will not become in a near future - a component of this cycle. Everything is related to everything in the nature, therefore contaminated sites induce chain reactions in their neighbourhood with impacts that can be expressed with a delay or even in places where we would never expect them. From these reasons, the Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic implements measures towards an important decrease of negative impacts of the contaminated sites to the environment and to human health during last years, as well as activities oriented to social and political acceptation of this problem. Details of these activities are shown in this special edition publication. RNDr. Vlasta Jánová, PhD. Director, Department of Environmental Geology, Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic 3 State of the Contaminated sites in Slovakia Contaminated sites – state-of-the-art in Europe and in Slovakia Contaminated sites in Europe Investigations performed by the European Environmental Agency by means of the questionnaires distributed in the EEA member states revealed that app. 3 millions of potential pollution sources are present in these countries. The number of identified probable contaminated sites, or contaminated sites reaches app. 1.8 million, and the estimated number of contaminated sites with contamination that was confirmed by surveys is about 250 000. These data will be consecutively justified as many EEA member states including the Slovak Republic perform or even finalize systematic inventory of the contaminated sites at present. The EEA investigation also shown that app. 80 000 of sites were remediated during the last 30 years, and this proportion corresponds to app. 1/3 out of the total number of sites where the contamination was confirmed. Considering the human activities contributing to the soil contamination and further contamination of rock environment and ground water, considerable differences among the individual EEA member states are obvious. Generally, industrial production and related activities belong to the most important human activities deteriorating the environment. It contributes to the soil contamination by more than 50 % in the countries like Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark and Spain. The average percentage contribution of such activities to soil contamination in Europe is 41.4 %. The second most important activity is municipal waste handling. Percentage contribution of this human activity to soil contamination in Europe is 15.2 % in average. The third position belongs to petrochemical industry, reaching 14.1 %. The national reports delivered to the EEA in the framework of reporting obligations show that heavy metals form the most frequent soil contaminants reaching 37.3 % of the total contamination, and oil substances form 33.7 %. In addition to oil substances, chlorinated hydrocarbons are the most frequent ground water contaminants. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons and phenols belong to the other important pollutants. Detailed analysis of the industrial activities that cause soil contamination in the individual countries shows considerable diff erences among the countries are obvious among the broad spectra of activities that refl

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