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In Scotland, SEPA's "Land Remediation and Waste Management Guidelines" document https://www.sepa.org.uk/media/28317/land-remediation-and-waste-management-guidelines.pdf gives useful insight on SEPA's approach with respect to re-use of excavated soils on brownfield sites. The Exec summary states "These guidelines set out SEPA’s approach to regulating the remediation of contaminated sites under the waste regulatory regime. This document is intended to help site developers, consultants, contractors, local authorities and SEPA staff to understand when the waste regulatory regime will be applied by SEPA to site remediation and redevelopment activities. It also describes the considerations that SEPA will take into account when applying regulatory controls on waste." Section 3 states "SEPA will not regulate under waste management controls the use of excavated materials on the development or remediation site (either through the planning or contaminated land regimes) where a remediation plan is in place incorporating all the following six criteria: 1. The use is a necessary part of the planned works. 2. The material is suitable for that use. 3. The material does not require any processing or treatment before it is reused. 4. No more than the quantity necessary is used. 5. The use of the material is not a mere possibility but a certainty. 6. The use of the soil will not result in pollution of the environment or harm to human health. The remediation plan must be agreed with the local authority (or SEPA if the site is a special site). SEPA will work with the relevant planning or Part IIA authority to ensure compliance with the remediation plan. Any use of materials that do not meet the six criteria will be regulated by SEPA under waste management controls. In most cases, material use that does not meet all the criteria will be required to be: • treated prior to reuse; • removed from site as waste; or • considered as disposal of waste by landfill." Perhaps most relevant to this discussion is the following statement in Section 3.4 (Disposal of waste – where SEPA will regulate under waste legislation) , which says "SEPA does not consider asbestos to be a suitable material for backfilling or other construction purposes. Bulk asbestos must not be backfilled or otherwise reused in site works. Such backfilling is considered as disposal of waste by landfill and a PPC landfill permit will be required." the $50m question is "what constitutes "Bulk" Asbestos? my understanding is it is soils containing >0.1% quantifiable Asbestos, which is the Haz Waste limit. This is providing me with a headache on a site at the moment, where a utility firm is looking to put a deep sewer (approx. 9mbgl) through MG contaminated with asbestos - Potentially all of the temporary arising's (>8000m3) may not be able to be replaced back into the trench. Currently scratching my head on this one..... ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CONTAMINATED-LAND-STRATEGIES list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CONTAMINATED-LAND-STRATEGIES&A=1