FRENCH FEEDBACK ON THE USE OF INERT WASTE LANDFILL CRITERIA FOR MANAGING EXCAVATED SOILS

Samuel Coussy (1) , Geoffrey Boissard (1) , Stéphane Belbèze , Dominique Guyonnet (1)

1 BRGM - Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM)

The management of excavated soils in the European Union suffers from a deficit of legislation and/or common methodology regarding the definition of soil quality objectives. As the project for a European "Soil Framework Directive" was postponed in 2014, member states that do not have national legislation regarding soil quality criteria generally refer to the inert-waste criteria defined in Annex II of the European Landfill Directive. But one difficulty with this approach is that these criteria were not derived for soil materials, but for waste materials (primarily construction and demolition; C&D waste). Their development relied on a number of working hypotheses; e.g. with respect to leaching behavior, based on the study of waste materials but not of excavated soils. This is a problem because, in France, many geological formations show natural enrichments in inorganic elements, even in areas that are not considered enriched in minerals. This is for example the case around Paris and its suburbs, where several geological formations may release natural concentrations of, e.g., sulfate and selenium. A particular issue is that the earthworks of the "Grand Paris Express" project (a new subway) will generate over 40 million tons of excavated soils from such formations. Managing excavated soils based on the inert-waste criteria of the Landfill Directive would generate excessive costs due to the landfilling of a significant portion of these excavated soils in non-hazardous waste landfills, which would lead to a progressive saturation of landfills in the Paris area. An alternative, more sustainable regarding such earthwork projects, would be to consider excavated soils as a resource rather than as a waste. For this purpose, French administration has developed new criteria for the reuse of excavated soils, based on: (i) the preservation of soil quality, (ii) the preservation of water resources and (iii) compatibility with the future use of the target site, from a public health perspective.

Mots clés: excavated soils; inert-waste criteria; landfill

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement

Samuel Coussy, Geoffrey Boissard, Stéphane Belbèze, Dominique Guyonnet. FRENCH FEEDBACK ON THE USE OF INERT WASTE LANDFILL CRITERIA FOR MANAGING EXCAVATED SOILS. Sardinia 2019 17th INTERNATIONAL WASTE MANAGEMENT AND LANDFILL SYMPOSIUM, Sep 2019, Santa Margherita di Pula, Italy. ⟨hal-02184553⟩