日本における土壤汚染對策法の法的評価

Enactment and Modification of the Soil Pollution Countermeasures Act in Japan

In May 2002, the Soil Pollution Countermeasures Act (hereinafter referred to as “SPCA”) was enacted. This Act went into effect in January 2003. The “SPCA” applies to both agricultural and urban lands. However, the Act applies mainly to urban land because the Farm Soil Pollution Prevention Act already exists for agricultural lands. Two significant points of the SPCA may be mentioned here. Firstly, the SPCA lists both “landowners etc.” and polluters as responsible parties for implementing the remediation measures; and it allows retroactivity of liability with respect to the responsibility of polluters. Secondly, the SPCA requires the disclosure of soil contamination data, although such disclosure is limited to regulated areas. The SPCA, therefore, has been significant in the two ways. As for its function,there is no question that the Act will motivate people to prevent soil contamination in the future. Since the SPCA went into effect, 80 to 90 % of remediation measures have been the removal of contaminated soil. However, the removal of contaminated soil has several problems. Firstly, it may cause new environmental risks during the transportation of the contaminated soil. When it is illegally dumped, it is almost never discovered. Dumped contaminated soil is even more difficult to discover than dumped waste. Secondly, it is very costly. Generally speaking, the removing measure is over ten times more expensive than other remediation measures. Thirdly, the trend to remove contaminated soil may cause the Brownfield problems as in the U.S. Therefore, the modified SPCA in 2009 adopted the policy of avoiding as much as possible the removal and transportation of contaminated soil. The modification of the SPCA tried to avoid the side effect of this Act, without changing the two significant points that I mentioned earlier－responsibility and disclosure.