Long-term Strategies for Handling Contaminated Sites and Large-scale Areas

In the United States, western and central Europe there are many large-scale polluted sites. These sites are simply too large to be cleaned up with available technologies. They are polluted by mining activities, smelters and other large industries and the pollution extends not only to soils, but also to sediments in water-ways and reservoirs. In addition new large-scale polluted sites are being created under conditions of no or little environmental control. Since these largescale polluted areas are expected to be present for many years, it is necessary to take a long-term view of the metal mobility and of the capacity of these areas to retain contaminants.