Industrial waste land

The expression industrial waste land , indicates any zone which sheltered one or more industrial activities before where this activity ceased, that this zone public or is deprived, which the buildings, machines or infrastructures are or not still present, that it belongs to an existing company or having gone bankrupt, which its owner is known or not.

Typology

One generally distinguishes

the waste lands resulting from heavy industry, in particular of activity metallurgical, energy, production of manure or dependant on fine chemistry or of soldier activities can pose particular problems of Risque S, Danger S and pollution, whose management is often made difficult by the difficulties of access to the files.
the waste lands making following the discontinuance of business of interior designers, or agroalimentary activity (possible health hazard)
When the owner died or unknown, one speaks about “ orphan site” .

One still misses Méthodologie, standards and thresholds standardized international for the measurement of the risk or the degree of pollution on this type of waste lands.
Ainsi France counted it in 2007 nearly 400.000 sites potentially polluted by industry or to the lines of business (database BASIAS), whereas the Netherlands count 700.000 of them, for a country much smaller and much less populated (16,4 million inhabitants).

Particular problems posed by the industrial waste lands

environmental After-effects: This word has a different significance according to the landscape and the context, but the industrial waste lands result often from industries or of activity pollutant be. It is frequent that dangerous waste there were forgotten or hidden.

Costs: the diagnosis and the depollution of the waste lands are expensive. A first problem is that of the Responsabilité and the transfer for responsibility when there is sale. Often the responsibility cannot be clearly established, and the principle pollutant then does not apply, or the pollutant disappeared or is not solvent.

Impacts on water: These waste lands are more numerous with the accesses of the channels, railways, mining sites and basins oil-bearing houilliers or , and on the port S. the companies often had there wells and drillings, or Décharge S interns, which often allow a direct contact of pollutants with the tablecloth.

Loss of memory… It is frequent that whole or part of the files of factories or become workshops of the industrial waste lands was destroyed or lost. (In this case in France, the waste land required before “rehabilitation” until 2007 a evaluation simplified of the risks (ESR), and if necessary an expensive thorough evaluation of the risks).
Une even waste land could be occupied by more than one ten successive companies and with the different activities since the 1st activity. The pollutants and after-effects can then interact in a complex way.

Superpositions of environmental after-effects . Old industrial sites or of services (stations, ports, stock rooms or sale.) become of the waste lands were taken often before for targets at the time of war. It is then necessary to add possible problems of Séquelles of war to the industrial after-effects (pollution, storage of Déchets and produced with Risque S, with often of the remainders of Amiante, Transformateur S with the Pyralène, presence of forgotten cavities, mining depressions, etc). These after-effects justify requalifications which require possibly a preliminary depollution which can be very expensive because for example of not-exploded Munitions, whose chemical ammunition (frequent in Red zone in north and is France, and on the maritime frontage of Europe. Old cisterns, wells, shell holes or bomb could be filled with dangerous products and objects.

Des uncertainties or failures of depollution or the lack of money for the rehabilitation often poses problems for the reconversion of the waste lands towards agriculture, of housing, leisures… whereas the request for control of the Périurbanisation increases.

Reconversion

It is done by cleaning the site, often by shaving all traces of the past, sometimes for there résintaller an industrial park which it even will produce a new waste land after bankruptcy or delocalization of the occupant.

In some cases, the buildings and certain machines were developed; transformed into museum, residences, school, university, for example. In the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, association the Chain of the spoil heaps with EPF and the District council and the common mines since the Nineties seek to integrate the network of the riders (old railways of the collieries), the spoil heaps and part of the mining waste lands in the green and blue Trame regional. Thus the preserved twin spoil heaps of the 11/19 in Loos in Gohelle (higher spoil heap of Europe) became the symbols of a sustainable development which wants to be built on the ruins of the nondurable development.

See too

External bonds

Photographs of industrial waste lands
reconversions in Luxembourg
photo Blog on the industrial waste lands

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