NICOLE E-News December 2016

NICOLE E-News December 2016

A successful workshop and the future of NICOLE

NICOLE successfully hosted its 20-year celebration workshop in Amsterdam on the 3rd and 4th November 2016. The workshop programme and venue, a site successfully transformed from an abandoned gas factory into an attractive cultural hotspot, combined to paint a picture of changing views and approaches towards contaminated land.

During the General Assembly meeting, the new proposed name for NICOLE was described and Members asked to vote on this name change. The vote resulted in 24 votes in favour of the name change proposal, 2 abstentions and 0 votes against. The General Assembly therefore agreed to the new name – the Network for Industrially Co-ordinated Sustainable Land Management in Europe (NICOLE remaining the acronym) and has instructed legal advisors to enact this through the normal legal process. 

 

“Life is a journey, not a destination” 
Together NICOLE’s Members – industries, service providers and academics, have made an inspiring journey in the past 20 years. 
At the beginning there was a strong focus on cost-effective clean-up of industrially contaminated land in Europe. Soon risk-based land management became the focal point. Moving into the 21st century, the scope of attention of industry slowly started to shift towards sustainable land management, with also a strong focus on prevention of new soil contamination.

Nowadays, there is a considerable amount of societal attention on environmental issues and sustainability. The general public expects companies to operate in a sustainable way. Most companies also have sustainable corporate strategies in place.  NICOLE industrial members, supported by the service providers and academics, therefore decided to put contaminated land management in a broader perspective. They want to show that they are truly committed to contribute to sustainable development of land. In doing so, they can create value for business, environment, and society. This could entail using previously contaminated industrial land for solar farms or biofuel production, remediating the land to bring it back to beneficial use as residential land or for community use, and there are many more options. In fact there is whole world of opportunities out there. Such a transition also required a name shift, keeping the acronym. It now reads: 

NICOLE;
Network for Industrially Co-ordinated Sustainable Land Management in Europe

Let’s continue our inspiring journey together!
 


 

NICOLE Spring workshop 2017

The Spring 2017 workshop will focus on creating value through sustainable  land and asset management. This will include balancing economic development (providing jobs, generating income) with social and environmental  needs and resources. The workshop is expected to support sustainable development of local and regional areas of land which formerly used to be mainly industrial and now need to be reconnected with existing  communities or regenerated  with new industrial use.

The themes of papers for the Workshop will include:

  • Re-use and redevelopment of industrial land in urban and rural areas.
  • Dealing with financial and administrative aspects including associated liability and changing industrial activity
  • Temporary and transitory land uses
  • Managing natural capital 

 

Update on Working Groups

Operational Window Working Group

Operating windows describe a way of providing comparable information about remediation process alternatives using a consistent and concise template. Operating window information at its most developed summarises key parameters that affect remediation process outcomes based on a synthesis across multiple practical applications.  Interim information for more emerging technologies may be summarised across a range of available technical resources such as research papers, case studies and demonstration projects.

This concise operational information can be used at several stages of remediation implementation:

  1. Initial option appraisal desk studies
  2. Determining additional site information needs for comparing between options
  3. Developing and planning implementation
  4. Providing a process verification context and framework information.

The working group is working with students from University of Karlsruhe Germany and University of Rome on parameters of ISCO performance by using influence heterogeneity and geochemistry
If you are interested to contribute or get to know more about this working group, please contact Chair Thomas Held .

Sustainable Remediation Working Group

The Sustainable Remediation working group has contributed to a new technical paper which is to be published in the Journal of Environmental Management – Comparison of international approaches to sustainable remediation. 

To help you access and share this paper, click on the link below. Free access to the article is available through this link until December 20, 2016, so take the opportunity to download it promptly!

http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1TzmQ14Z6tPRXa
 

Technical workshop

During the workshop in Amsterdam, it was proposed by the Contaminants of Concern working group (which had previously worked on PFAS/PFOS) to organise a technical workshopon 1,2 dichloroethane (DCA) and asbestos as contaminants of concern.

If you are interested to participate this workshop, please contact Elze-Lia for more information.
 

 

   

NICOLE position paper review

During the Regulatory Working Group meetings in Vienna and Amsterdam a NICOLE position paper has been drafted on handling of spills. 
Please contact Elze-Lia Visser for the drafted document for review.

Comments on the draft should be sent by Wednesday 14 December.
 

Events

Battelle Conference

9 – 12 January 2017
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Ninth International Conference on Remediation and Management of Contaminated Sediments
RemTEC Summit

7 – 9 March 2017
Denver, Colorado, USA

www.remtecsummit.com
NICOLE Spring 
Workshop 2017

8 – 9 June 2017
Milan, Italy

Theme:
Creating value through sustainable land and asset management
AquaConsoil 2017

 26- 30 June 2017
Lyon, France

More information and call for abstract is open on the website.
NICOLE Fall
Workshop 2017

4 – 6 October 2017
Copenhagen, Denmark

NICOLE and the 13th Meeting of the International Committee on Contaminated Land (ICCL) will run back-to-back and allow opportunities for interchange of ideas. The ICCL are regulators and policy-makers dealing with contaminated land management.
The NICOLE meeting will focus on Groundwater Management on Contaminated Sites

Comments are closed.