When the first reports about PFAS reached the outside world three years ago, it was primarily about the work on contaminated soil at the Oosterweel connection. But the contours of how deeply Flanders is buried in forever chemicals are becoming increasingly clear. The Flemish waste company Ovam is busy investigating 831 places in Flanders where fire-fighting foam containing high levels of PFAS may have been used. Either as a fire training area, or at large industrial fires where extinguishing foam is used.
Only fifteen files have been fully completed after various soil investigations, but seven of them appear to contain so many PFAS in the soil that remediation is necessary. Based on the ongoing soil surveys, Ovam estimates that 220 areas of soil will have to be excavated or cleaned for the fire brigade sites alone.
For those seven files, the Department of Healthcare has advised to announce even stricter measures than the no-regret measures that were initially in force. These may mean that you should not use well water or eat eggs from your own chickens. “The tightening often means a larger perimeter for measures around the site,” says spokesperson Joris Moonens.
Asbestos
The number of contaminated sites will undoubtedly rise much higher. In addition to the fire brigade sites, 4,000 risk locations have been listed that may also be contaminated with PFAS. Of the only 89 completed soil investigations, 21 appear to require remediation. The office of Flemish Environment Minister Zuhal Demir (N-VA) compares the wave of remediation that Flanders faces with the major efforts needed to remove asbestos. “It will take decades before everything is cleaned up, and that operation will cost hundreds of millions of euros,” says Chief Cabinet Secretary Andy Pieters.
The big question is who will have to pay for the costs. The principle applies that ‘the polluter pays’. For the remediation of the 3M factory in Zwijndrecht, the Flemish government received 571 million from the chemical giant to compensate for PFAS pollution. A remediation operation is now underway on the site of the old Opel factory in Antwerp, amounting to approximately 4 million euros for a first phase, for which Ovam and the Port Authority will bear the costs.
But who is responsible for the remediation of the fire brigade sites? The mayors are not happy about it. “If these costs were fully borne by the municipalities, many would go bankrupt,” says Joop Verzele (CD&V), mayor of Kruisem, one of the municipalities where reorganization is needed.
The municipalities are asking for a Flemish remediation fund to pay these costs. According to the Demir cabinet, this is being worked on together with other regions. Flanders is examining whether European regulations can be expanded to make producers more liable for remediation costs.
According to liability law specialist Evelien de Kezel (University of Antwerp), governments should not have too much hope. “Companies have withheld knowledge about the effects of their products, but this is especially relevant for claims regarding health damage. A government will not be able to do much about remediation costs through liability law, because the relevant deadlines for this have often already passed,” it said. “We can only hope that in the future a government will impose stricter rules on, for example, standards on companies to protect the environment, and that they will also enforce them.”
Remediation is very complex. How that process takes place depends, among other things, on the soil type, the severity of the contamination and the type of PFAS. “You can dig up the contaminated soil and dump it, burn it or clean it,” says Ovam spokesperson Jan Verheyen.
But remediation is pointless if PFAS continues to leak into the ground. The fire brigade has now switched to fluorine-free extinguishing foam for ‘household fires’, but in exceptional cases they can still use extinguishing foam with PFAS for complex, industrial fires. “A few years ago, the quality of fluorine-free firefighting foams was not yet good enough. That is now the case, but replacing everything is a complicated process,” says Frederik Vercruysse of the Antwerp Fire Department.
