General information about the project

Acronym: WELCOME

Project no.: EVK1-2001-00132

Program: EESD

Competition No: EESD-ESD – 3

Key action: Sustainable Management and Quality of Water

Status: accepted for funding

Type of project: RTD

Project duration 36 months

The overall objective of the project is to develop a tool that can help environmental megasite managers in establishing an appropriate management approach for their megasites. The anticipated project outcome will be a tool to establish an effective Integrated Management System (IMS).

In Europe there are many large areas and regions with high concentration of industry (e.g. sea ports, large scale chemical industry complexes, metal mining areas, military complexes, etc.). In these sites, which are here referred to as MEGASITES, soil and groundwater are usually polluted with different classes of pollutants. The typical pollution profile of megasites consists of multiple sources, often located near and under industrial production facilities, and/or large sources the dimensions of which reach several square kilometres.

A complete cleanup within an intermediate timeframe (25 years) is not feasible, and sometimes even impossible, due to technical and economical reasons. Therefore, megasites represent steady and long-term potential sources of regional contamination of groundwater, surface water and sediments.

Policy development and management instruments, which are effective in ecological, economic and social terms, are crucial to the megasite revitalisation.

At the anticipated expansion of the EU with the Visegrad countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) this becomes ever more pressing since the countries have a large number of extremely polluted megasites.

The extent of the effect of megasite pollution on the quality of aquifers, downstream surface waters and coastal and marine environments depends on the position of the megasite in the river basin, as well as protective measures that have been taken. Beside the threat posed to water quality, direct risks can also be posed to ecosystems and human health by a widespread diffusion of pollution through contaminated sediment transport in rivers.

As a result of the above described problems, megasite managers, representatives of urban governance and regional authorities responsible for water quality and contaminated land management face a number of limitations in applying research outcomes related to megasites contamination especially when making decisions and establishing water quality protection policies.

Development and implementation of integrated fit-for-use knowledge packages as a decision support system to establish a feasible management approach shall effectively facilitate megasites management especially in the context of adoption and enforcement of the EU Water Framework Directive.

The methods and management system developed in the project will help defining the most cost-effective solution for megasite water quality management. The project will facilitate establishing a cost-effective risk reduction and ecological engineering technologies and methods. Moreover, economically viable approaches shall save financial resources while promoting productive investments in industry or, public services and other economic restructuring. Providing availability of those new and effective technologies will constitute a basis for the development of new EU based companies entering a potential vast market of soil and groundwater remediation.

 Technical perspective

The multidisciplinary approach selected in the project shall focus on the following aspects:

• environmental engineering, tools for assessing risk reduction and cost-efficiency of management approaches

• natural attenuation of BTX and chlorinated hydrocarbons at groundwater/surface water interfaces,

• transformation of inorganic substances (biological and geochemical approaches);

• sorption and mobilisation of pollutants during formation and dissemination of sediments in river basins

• megasites at delta, river and stream level.

The project addresses all policy relevant aspects of risk-management and control of polluted megasites. Key site management issues will be resolved within the WELCOME Project research program. The obtained results will be integrated in an interactive water quality management system for megasites. The project also addresses the organisational needs of implementing such a system. Therefore an active involvement of end-users ( e.g local administration ) and co-operation with the EU end user networks (such as NICOLE and other networks from industry, regulators and academics ) is assumed and organised.

The role of IETU is:

• To verify and apply the IMS to metal mining areas, using Tarnowskie Góry Chemical Plant as a reference megasite

• To provide systematically site characteristic data (environmental as well as spatial planning data) for establishing the IMS, and test the innovative elements for practical use in the IMS

• To support validation of megasite risk assessment procedure and the cost-efficiency method in establishing cost efficient water quality management approaches

• To define a general approach for managing the risks related to heavy metals contamination in soils and groundwater at large contaminated areas

• To identify high risk areas with regard to metal mobility and bioavailability

• To define and test measures that minimise risk by the reduction of metal bioavailability using sustainable immobilisation technologies

• To define and test measures that reduce dissemination and bioavailability of heavy metals in the unsaturated zone

• To define and test measures that reduce dissemination of heavy metals in contaminated groundwater plumes.

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