Category 18 April 2019

Act and Working Group on Remediation for Soil and Groundwater Pollution of Asian and Pacific Region (ReSAGPAPR WG)

In 2000, the Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act was enforced in Taiwan, setting regulatory requirements as a new performance standard. Based on it, measures like assigning pollution fees, creating research projects, providing consultancy and technical developments were implemented successfully to maintain an eco-innovative  sound pollutant control in soil and groundwater environments.

The challenge

By the turn of the century, environmental awareness became stronger in Taiwan. As a result, illegal dumping of

unidentified and hazardous waste got into the focus of public management. Aiming at an improvement in the sector, the Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act  was formulated to prevent soil and groundwater pollution and support groundwater and soil recovery, ensure the sustainable use of soil and groundwater, enhance the living environment, and protect public health.

The measure

In order to clarify the implementation sectors of the Act, a number of documents was added, like monitoring regulations and standards, the Remediation Fund Utilisation Regulations, or the priority ranking assessment of Cleanup sites. To support the cleaning process by implementation and further development, in 2010 a technical Working Group was established. It supports and develops measures like taxation schemes and other fiscal measures, research coordination, development of practical tools like field monitoring kits or the evaluation and documentation of successfully remediated sites.

Lessons learnt

Aim of all the work done was revitalising the usage of the contaminated land with green remediation strategies, protecting resources by rigorously carrying out regulations, providing training courses of advanced technologies by and for professionals, and sharing this experiences with other countries, especially countries in East and Southeastern Asia. To support this effort as well as practical skills sharing a special meeting programme was established and dissemination initiatives like newsletter, monitoring schemes, or an Annual Conference were created.

Further deployment

With its daily work as well as with the Annual Conferences the Working Group aims at promoting the research activities, policy development, and management strategies to developing the innovative remediation techniques on soil and groundwater ‐ contaminated sites and also on disseminating the knowledge and technologies for the benefit of the member of the working group in the Asian and Pacific Region. The concept is fully deployed, so it is  estimated to be level 9 on the generic maturity scale GML.

 

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