Reporting soil remediation and digging in contaminated soil

Are you going to remediate (restore) or dig in contaminated soil? You have to keep to a number of environmental rules. In many cases, you also need to notify the authorities and supply information before you start the work.

What is soil remediation?

Soil remediation is the process of cleaning or clearing contaminated soil. For example, you must remediate the soil if you want to build on contaminated land. You can also choose to remediate the soil voluntarily because you are going to sell building land or a building.

There are different ways to carry out a soil remediation:

• You remove the contaminated soil.
• You cover the contaminated soil. You do this with a 1-metre-thick layer of clean soil or, for example, a layer of concrete, tiles, or asphalt.

Do you want to use a different way because this has advantages? For example, because that way it takes less time, is cheaper, or causes less nuisance for people in the neighbourhood? You can ask the municipality, province, or water authority to deviate from the general rules and define a situation-specific regulation (maatwerkvoorschrift, in Dutch). You can apply for a situation-specific regulation via the Environment and Planning Portal (Omgevingsloket, in Dutch).

Before you start remediation

To remediate the soil, you must comply with the rules from the Environmental Activities Decree (Besluit activiteiten leefomgeving, Bal, in Dutch) and the environment plan.

Before you start the remediation, you must first have a soil survey carried out (in Dutch). The company that will carry out the remediation must be accredited according to assessment guideline BRL SIKB 7000 (in Dutch). The company that will do the environmental guidance (milieukundige begeleiding, in Dutch) must be accredited according to assessment guideline BRL SIKB 6000 (in Dutch). This company also produces the remediation report.

Use the Rijkswaterstaat's search option (erkenning zoeken, in Dutch) to check whether a company is accredited.

Information and notification duty for soil remediation

If you carry out a soil remediation you have a duty to notify and a duty to inform (in Dutch). You must notify the work and submit information regarding boundaries of the site and the expected start date of the activity. You submit the notification and the information via the Environment and Planning Portal (in Dutch) at least 4 weeks before you start the work. 1 week before you start, you must report which company is going to perform the remediation and do the environmental guidance.

You must submit another notification when:

• you start the remediation
• there is a change in the remediation work
• you have finished the work

Digging in contaminated soil

Are you going to dig in contaminated soil? It depends on the amount of soil and the degree of contamination which rules you must comply with. You can also check the flowchart digging in soil (in Dutch).

• For 25 m3 of soil or less, the municipality sets the rules. You can look these up in the environment plan or contact your municipality (in Dutch).
• For more than 25 m3, the rules from the Environmental Activities Decree apply.

Are you excavating more than 25 m3 of soil in total? In general you will need to have a soil survey carried out before you start the work (in Dutch). This soil survey determines the soil quality intervention value (interventiewaarde bodemkwaliteit, in Dutch). This value indicates how contaminated the soil is and whether that contamination poses a potential risk to humans, plants, or animals.

Information and notification duty for digging

Do you carry out digging activities in soil? You must notify the work and submit information about the digging via the Environment and Planning Portal before you start (in Dutch). If you excavate and later return the soil, you do not have to provide information.

If the soil quality exceeds the intervention value, stricter rules apply (in Dutch):

• You have a notification and information duty before you start digging.
• You also have an information duty when you have finished digging.
• The contractor carrying out the work must be accredited to do the work according to assessment guideline BRL SIKB 7000 (in Dutch).
• In some cases, a company must have accreditation according to assessment guideline BRK SIKB 6000 (in Dutch) to do the environmental guidance (in Dutch).

Use the Rijkswaterstaat's search option (erkenningen zoeken, in Dutch) to check whether a company is accredited.

Transitional law on remediation and digging

In some cases, transitional law applies to remediation and digging. Before 1 January 2024, when the Environment and Planning Act came into force, remediation activities were reported with a BUS notification (BUS-melding). In these cases, the rules from the Soil Protection Act (Wet bodembescherming, Wbb) still apply instead of the rules from the Environment and Planning Act. You have to notify activities that fall under transitional law to the competent authority (bevoegd gezag, in Dutch).