Reporting soil remediation and digging in contaminated soil

Soil remediation

Are you going to remediate the soil? For example, because you want to build on contaminated land and you are therefore obliged to remediate the soil. Or you want to voluntarily remediate the soil because you are going to sell building land or a building.

There are different ways to carry out a soil remediation:

• You remove the contaminated soil.
• You cover the contaminated soil. You do this with a 1-metre-thick layer of clean soil or, for example, a layer of concrete, tiles, or asphalt.

Do you want to carry out the soil remediation in a different way because this has advantages? For example because that way it takes less time, is cheaper, or causes less nuisance for people in the neighbourhood? You can ask the municipality, province, or water authority to deviate from the general rules and define tailor-made rules (maatwerkvoorschrift, in Dutch). You can apply for a maatwerkvoorschrift via the online service counter Omgevingsloket (in Dutch).

Information and notification duty

If you carry out a soil remediation you have a duty to notify and a duty to inform (in Dutch). You must submit your data (information duty) and the notification via the Omgevingsloket (in Dutch) at least 4 weeks before you start the work.

You must submit another notification when:

• you start the remediation
• there is a change in the remediation work
• you have finished the work

Remediation report

After the remediation, you must submit a remediation report (evaluation report). You must also comply with other rules from the Environmental Activities Decree (Bal):

• You must first have a soil survey (in Dutch) carried out.
• To carry out a remediation a company must be accredited according to assessment guideline BRL SIKB 7000 (in Dutch).
• For environmental guidance (in Dutch), a company must be accredited according to assessment guideline BRL SIKB 6000 (in Dutch). This company also produces the remediation report.

Use the search menu (in Dutch) on the Rijkswaterstaat website to check whether a company is accredited.

Digging in contaminated soil

Are you going to dig in contaminated soil? It depends on the amount of soil and the degree of contamination which rules you must comply with.

• For 25 m3 of soil or less, the municipality sets the rules. You can look these up in the environment plan or contact your municipality (in Dutch).
• For more than 25 m3, the rules from the Environmental Activities Decree (Bal) apply.

Are you excavating more than 25 m3 of soil in total? In general you will need to have a soil survey (in Dutch) carried out before you start the work. This soil survey determines the soil quality intervention value (interventiewaarde bodemkwaliteit, in Dutch). This value indicates how contaminated the soil is and whether that contamination poses a potential risk to humans, plants, or animals.

Information and notification duty

Is the quality of the soil in which you are going to dig lower than or equal to the intervention value? Then you must provide information via the Omgevingsloket (in Dutch) before you start digging. If you excavate and later return the soil, you do not have to provide information.

Are you going to dig in soil with a soil quality higher than the intervention value? Then stricter rules apply:

• You have a notification and information duty before you start digging.
• You also have an information duty when you have finished digging.
• The contractor carrying out the work must be accredited to do the work according to assessment guideline BRL SIKB 7000 (in Dutch).
• In some cases, a company must have accreditation according to assessment guideline BRK SIKB 6000 (in Dutch) to do the environmental guidance (milieukundige begeleiding, in Dutch).

Use the search menu accreditations (erkenningen zoeken, in Dutch) on the Rijkswaterstaat desk to check whether a company is accredited.

Transitional law on remediation and digging

In some cases transitional law applies to remediation and digging. For example, for locations that received a ‘serious and urgent’ decision before 1 January 2024. And for remediation operations that started before 1 January 2024. In these cases the rules from the Soil Protection Act (Wbb) still apply, instead of the rules from the Environment and Planning Act. You have to notify activities that fall under transitional law to the competent authority (bevoegd gezag Wbb, in Dutch).

Online application procedure via Message Box

Message Box has not yet been linked to the Omgevingsloket. This means that you cannot make a notification for soil remediation via Message Box. Message Box is a secure email system that enables you as an entrepreneur to exchange digital messages with Dutch government agencies.