All objects could become garbage: Waste disguising civilisation Dieter D. Genske (Zürich) & Susanne Hauser (Berlin) 1 Introduction 2 Codes of waste and degradation 3 Rationales, discourses and excurses 4 Final Remark 5 References The paper was originally written for an Internet lecture offered by the Open Semiotics Resource Center (University of Toronto). It presents a semiotic approach to the current discussion on waste and brownfields in environmental studies, cutting free the layers of civilization and cultural history, which become accessible through the analysis of signs for land use in a diachronic perspective. Der Beitrag geht auf eine Internetvorlesung zurück, die für das Open Semiotics Resource Center (University of Toronto) als Online-Vorlesung entwickelt wurde. Er thematisiert Abfälle und Brachflächen in ihrer semiotischen Dimension und assoziiert sie mit der zivilisatorischen Maskierung, der Verschüttung und Verdeckung kulturhistorischer Schichten, die erst durch die Interpretation von Zeichen vergangener Nutzung und Benutzung sichtbar werden. 1 Introduction Waste is a matter of concern for all of us. In this paper, which is based on lectures given for the Open Semiotics Resource Center (Toronto), we will try to analyse the different dimensions of this complex topic with special regards to its semiotic implications. We will address the topic from two different perspectives in line with the disciplines that we represent: the view of a cultural scientist (Susanne Hauser) and the view of a natural scientist (Dieter D. Genske). This makes the following analysis a transdisciplinary one. We have tried to stage this lecture in the form of a classical dialogue, giving every side enough room to expand and to develop a line of argumentation typical for the discipline represented. We have chosen this topic since we have been dealing with waste and derelict land throughout our own biographies, be it from the consulting side to process and recycle waste, be it as land redeveloper for the International Building Exhibition IBA Emscherpark (Germany), or as historian and semiotician interested in symbolic and material practices related to refuse of different qualities. We met the first time in the mid 1990s, when we prepared a workshop to take place at the International Congress on Semiotics in Dresden Germany. This K O D I K A S / C O D E Ars Semeiotica Volume 30 (2007) No. 3 - 4 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 310 workshop brought together architects and engineers, geographers and philosophers, artists and planers to discuss the semiotics of derelict land (Genske & Hauser 2002). We learned during this workshop that there is much more to say about the semiotics of waste and wasteland, and we consequently decided to launch this initiative. It is a first essay, which will mature with every feedback that we receive from you. This aspect makes this project both innovative and exiting. The course is structured in eight lectures, two of which are published here. The first lecture addresses the codes of waste and the codes of degradation. Lecture two explains how signs of degradation are interpreted in order to investigate derelict terrain. A first version of the ideas expressed in Susanne Hauser’s texts has been published in Bernard, Wallmannsberger & Withalm (1997) and Hauser (2001). The ideas presented in Dieter Genske’s texts are developed in more detail in Genske (2003) and Genske & Heinrich (2003). 2 Codes of waste and degradation 2.1 Codes of waste 2.1.1 Order and non-order Waste and garbage arise in areas where order prevails and where production serves the purposes of utilization and consumption. The relation of garbage and waste to the order that produces them is a dynamic between the external and the internal, the imperceptible and the perceptible, the non-object and the object, silence and speech, non-sense and sense. Garbage and waste have an indistinct character, drawing all other objects into this blurredness: All objects could become garbage. In an economic system that continues to subjugate the earth, reducing it through processes of production and consumption to virtual waste, all objects are suspected of ending up as garbage. And not only objects: Within the structure of the production process that sets garbage outside itself, human beings can also ultimately be relegated to the status of “garbage”, if they become identified with the non-meaning associated with garbage. In regard to the limits of garbage and waste, our concern is not to aestheticize fascinating marginalia, but to grapple with the central phantasms and conditions of activity of this society. The relationship garbage and waste maintain with the order that excludes them from itself can be described with a variety of models: The order and its waste stand in structural, functional, and process-related relationships. In the Modernist period, the order’s Other can be described in structural and thus also in binary terms; in many ways, garbage is defined as the opposite of order. Therefore it’s not only possible but also appropriate to think of garbage and waste in semiotic categories. Here we will not only speak of what waste or garbage are per se, but also of the “investissement”, to use Roland Barthes’ term, the furnishing of something with its sense and meaning. Garbage and waste are debated in terms of material, toxicological, or technical aspects, not in terms of “present danger”, “real pollution”, or “proven harmfulness”. The central question is the metaphorical space in which garbage and waste are situated. In this discussion, a new relationship establishes itself between order and what is excluded from it, between cleanliness and dirt, between reason and unreason - and not least between the morally “correct” and the “wrong” or even “reprehensible”. The public and All objects could become garbage 311 widespread discourse produces and maintains this metaphorical space, in which the erection and maintenance of a new order and the borders to be drawn around this order are negotiated and reproduced. 2.1.2 Sources and types of waste At the beginning of the new millennium, every two months every European produces an amount of household wastes corresponding to his own weight. In the United States this quantity is already reached after one month. One of the most demanding challenges of an urban society is to handle these wastes, i.e. to collect, transport, stock and transform them into new resources. In mediaeval times, urban wastes were simply left in streets, often thrown out the windows. “Cleaner pigs” took over the job of cleaning up by eating the edible residues. This led to a general degradation of public health and finally to the outbreak of epidemics such as the Black Death. Although many attempts were made to systematically collect and discharge wastes, as for instance by the French King Philippe II in the 12th century, it was not until 1883 that the Prefect of Paris Poubelle ordered his citizens to dispose their wastes in trash cans. He also obliged them to sort their wastes in glass, paper and compostable wastes. It wasn’t until the 1940s that all citizens of Paris finally accepted this system. Similar problems of waste management were encountered in other cities such as London, where in 1875 the Public Health Act required the communities to remove and dispose wastes. Still, in those days the production of urban waste was comparably low. This was because organic wastes were consumed directly by household animals or used as fertilisers. Glass bottles were reused, magazines not as abundantly read as today, plastic was not yet produced and reusable items such as cloths, metals, tiles, etc. were picked up by rag pickers, metal collectors, etc. Large, waste producing businesses and industries had yet not been established. The production of urban household waste increased significantly with the advent of industrialisation. A citizen of an industrialised country produces much more waste than the typical pre-industrial bourgeois. Today’s townsmen also produce much more waste than people living in developing countries, where the waste production of today can be compared with the one of Europe in the 19th century. Waste is defined as material that is of no use anymore to the present owner and that is therefore discarded. The handling and management of waste is both in the interest of the present owner and in the interest of public health. In general, wastes can be grouped according to their, physical state, origin, level of danger and potential to be recycled, downcycled or transformed into secondary resources. The physical state of waste can be either solid as in the case of household wastes, liquid as in the case of sewage or gaseous as in the case of chimney exhausts. In an urban environment three different sources of solid waste can be encountered: • Household wastes, also referred to as municipal solid wastes MSW, consisting of food and yard wastes, paper, plastics, glass, metals, ceramics, wood, textiles and appliances. • Wastes from urban businesses and industries producing either wastes specific to their production or wastes similar to household wastes. • Wastes produced on construction sites, being mainly excavations and rubble from dismantled buildings. Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 312 There are inoffensive wastes and hazardous wastes. Four groups of hazardous wastes are distinguished: • Toxic wastes including substances dangerous to human health and the environment. • Corrosive wastes having a pH smaller than 2.0 or higher than 12.5. • Reactive wastes provoking chemical reaction, fires and explosion when coming into contact with water, air or other wastes. They may emit toxic fumes when mixed. • Ignitable wastes that can cause fires under standard temperature and pressure conditions. The United Nations Environment Programme UNEP defines hazardous wastes as “Wastes other than radioactive wastes which, by reason of their chemical activity or toxic, explosive, corrosive or other characteristics causing danger or likely to cause danger to health of the environment.” Radioactive wastes comprise a group of special wastes that are legally treated in a different way and are stored in specially designed repositories. Annually, four-hundred million tons of hazardous wastes are produced. The Convention of Basel (www.basel.int) prohibits the exportation of hazardous wastes into countries not prepared to treat these wastes. Finally, waste can be grouped with regard to their potential to be exploited: • Certain waste types can be reused, for example bottles that are refilled, beer cases that are re-employed, batteries that are recharged, etc. • Certain waste types can be recycled, for example cans, glass, or paper, etc. When compared with the production of goods of the “first generation”, recycling saves both resources and energy. Some material can be recycled indefinitely, for example aluminium and glass. • Certain waste types can be downcycled, for example paper to cardboard, textiles to fillings, plastic to granulate, etc. • Certain waste types can be composted to produce both compost and energy. One ton of “green wastes” generates 0.30 tons of compost and 0.12 tons of biogas. • Mixed wastes. Once different waste types are mixed, they become difficult to exploit. The French refer to mixed wastes as “déchets banalisés” already expressing its limited exploitation potential. Mixed waste may be incinerated in municipal solid waste incinerators to be reduced to one third of its original weight and one fifth of its original volume. The volume reduction alleviates in a significant way the demand for waste storage facilities. Furthermore, incineration produces energy, which can be exploited: One ton of household waste generates the same calorific power as 120 litres of heating oil or 200 kg of coal. Beside the positive aspects of waste incineration it should be kept in mind that incineration also produces waste: exhausts, bottom ashes, i.e. the residue of combusted waste, flue dusts collected in exhaust filters and process water. Waste incineration is considered to be an expensive technology, especially since process water and exhausts have to be filtered and treated. Bottom ashes and flue dust have to be stored in special waste storage facilities. For these reasons, in countries with large resources of virgin land a simple deposition of both unsorted and untreated waste prevails without All objects could become garbage 313 reducing its volume by incineration. A comparison of the wealth of national economies and the percentage of waste incinerated illustrates that only rich countries can actually afford waste incineration. It also has to be noted that the feasibility of incineration depends strongly on the composition of the waste to be incinerated. In countries where the daily diet is dominated by vegetables and fruit, with little paper and plastic mixed into the household waste, the calorific power of municipal wastes may not be sufficient to keep an incinerator running. A variety of modelling tools has been developed in order to predict the waste production of a given community: Waste statistics raised for the community under consideration allow both the analysis of urban waste production patterns over time and a projection to future developments. Data must be collected constantly in order to include seasonal changes and local waste production characteristics. A community map indicating waste production rates for each quarter helps localise problem areas and ensures that adequate action can be taken. Based on the concept of Equivalent Habitants the waste production of a community including businesses as well as commuters and tourists can be modelled. In this approach a business is represented by an equal amount of residents that would produce the same amount of waste as the business would. This concept, commonly applied to waste water, can be applied to solid waste and gas emissions as well. Specific parameters such as volume of waste, its weight, percentage of biodegradables, heavy metal contents, etc. can be addressed. A community can also be interpreted as an ensemble of units producing different types and quantities of materials referred to as goods, which also include wastes. These goods are submitted to processes such as transport, transformation, elimination and storage. Mass fluxes between units can be analysed by means of a material flow analysis in which goods and processes are identified and mass fluxes per unit of time are characterised. This analysis also includes uncertainties associated with processes and goods. System borders such as the city limits have to be defined, as well as sinks like the atmosphere, surface water, groundwater and the soil. 2.1.3 Reception of garbage and waste Any discussion concerning garbage deals with objects or material which, superfluous to the producing order, are therefore eliminated. Expelled from the realm of order, they are relegated to a region of chaos, disorder, boundlessness, non-sense, entropy and timelessness. Garbage is what stands in categorical opposition to the core activities of modern society, i.e. exploitation, use, production, and consumption. Exclusion from these activities means falling into the category of garbage, and this phenomenon also has socio-political repercussions and connotations. The production of garbage remains nonetheless the central activity of our society. No other society to date has been so preoccupied with the production and conversion of all available resources to perishable goods and garbage as is our own. In German encyclopedias around the turn of the century, “Müll” (=”garbage”) emerged as a term for a type of waste, denoting in particular domestic waste for which there was no further use and therefore characterized in every respect as worthless. “Müll” is therefore a categorym whose evolution in the German-speaking regions coincided with the beginning of industrialized waste disposal. Since this time-period, the various sub-categories such as sweepings, shards, rags, ashes have become increasingly obsolete, resurrected only in times of crisis, during which a differentia- Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 314 tion and rehabilitation of “garbage” as recyclable “materials” or “substances” can be observed. The term “garbage” can be extended in a metaphoric, metarealistic way to describe any kind of definitive obsolescence. “Das Müll-System” (= “The Garbage System”), the title of an analysis of the global situation based on the fundamental category “garbage” (Grassmuck & Unverzagt 1991), coincides with Ilya Kabakov’s description of Soviet society (Kabakov & Groys 1991: 105). “This entire reality is one huge garbage heap.” Being “garbage” doesn’t necessarily or materially exclude objects and substances from definite, physically interpreted spaces, but certainly from the realm of objects and substance, perceived as limited or limitable and consequently definable. Garbage symbolizes the amorphous and chaotic in a substantial, semantic, and perceptual sense, the components of garbage no longer being differentiated. The undefined and undifferentiated quality of garbage is experienced as one of its central and most menacing characteristics. From the point of view of order, garbage always symbolizes the chaotic Other, eluding its categories and thereby its authority. Once an object becomes certified as garbage, it no longer belongs to the realm of order. However, the area beyond the realm of order harbours many familiar and unfamiliar dangers. A system of order possesses and produces identity, partly in the rejection of what is not or no longer part of it. A rejection of what has been banished from a society can internally be turned against objects, materials, and people invested with the characteristics attributed to garbage. This connection is nothing new. Well into the 19th century, the traditionally marginalized groups in European history such as prostitutes, executioners, male and female convicts, the poor, including war widows and orphans were assigned the task of disposing of materials considered to be of no value. At the close of the century, they were followed in some large German cities by militarily organized troops of street sweepers composed of “discharged” veterans. Even the mechanisation of waste disposal could not remove the stigma attached to those engaged in the area (Hösel 1990). Evidence is provided by the fact that, during the labour shortage in the Federal Republic of Germany, the unpopular cleaning jobs with the local authorities were relegated to foreign guest workers. In 1979, Thompson, in his Rubbish Theory (1981: 11), asserts “garbage is still pretty vile stuff, and tends to stick to those who come into contact with it”. While “garbage” mainly epitomizes phenomena excluded from domestic and urban economies and constitutes altogether the more striking metaphor, waste is the more neutral, overarching term. After all, waste has recycling potential. It contains mobile elements that the owner wishes to discharge or whose orderly disposal serves the interests of the community as a whole, as West Germany’s Waste Disposal Law of June 7, 1972 stipulated. Waste can bridge the frontiers of order. This is indicated by the fact that waste, more easily than garbage, can be treated as a concealed category, suspended between durability (= objects that increase in value) and perishability (= objects that diminish in value), reinstated after a lull as soon as the market picks up. To quote Thompson once again (Thompson 1979: 25): “… The object simply continues to exist in a kind of limbo outside of time and meaning, where it retains the chance of being rediscovered (if it has not disintegrated or been destroyed in the meantime)”. Wastes are simply materials in the wrong place at the wrong time. As long as they are defined as waste, it remains unclear whether they are completely worthless or whether they will eventually be rehabilitated at some future stage. The concept of waste as a “shifter” may be understood as useful for the analysis of the boundaries of a social, cultural, and economic order from a third perspective, neither order nor chaos, persisting in suspension somewhere between the two, excludable yet not definitely excluded. All objects could become garbage 315 This interpretation has existed for more than a century: “Industry is committed to maximum waste reduction, reintegrating unavoidable wastes into the production cycle or incorporating them productively elsewhere.” According to Meyer’s Lexicon of 1889 “it is not uncommon for the prosperity of an entire firm to depend on the successful use of wastes (…)”. Significant by-products of the chemical industry such as aniline dye synthesis or the production of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC) owe their existence to the coal and steel sector’s desire to recycle wastes and to the optimistic belief in the practical validity of metaphors of natural cycles. In this context the concept of industrial ecology has been developed, which aims at breaking the linear exploitation pattern of traditional industries characterised by extraction of resources, production of goods, and dumping of wastes. Industrial ecology takes advantage of the synergies between production processes by considering “wastes” as potential resources for other industries (Genske 2003: 10). An example is the Eco-Park Kalundborg in Denmark that combines an electrical power plant, an oil refinery, a pharmaceutical plant, a wallboard factory, a sulphuric acid producer, a cement manufacturer, fish farming, horticulture greenhouses, area homes and farms (Raven et al. 1998: 344). According to the Center for Eco-Industrial Development at Cornell University already more than 25 Eco-Parks existed by the end of the 20th century. 2.2 Codes of degradation 2.2.1 Resources, waste, space and conflict While Earth’s population keeps on growing, more and more resources are consumed. After the easily accessible ones at the surface had been depleted, more complex exploitation methods were applied to reach deeper into the ground. In many cases villages were established where resources were extracted. They became the nuclei for urban settlements. Already in ancient time the existence of water wells determined the places where settlements were established. Much later, during the time of industrialisation, coal mines attracted workers from rural areas, settling right next to their place of work, again attracting bakers, butchers, blacksmiths and all those needed to establish urban infrastructure. More resources were extracted while urban development gained momentum: wells were drilled for water, pits were dug for aggregates, quarries were opened for building stones, roof covering slate, lime, etc. Hence, urban development is closely connected with resource extraction of all kinds. Population rises when resources are made available and it declines again when they are exhausted. In some cases, the dimension of material moved to exploit resources is enormous. For example, the Bingham Canyon Copper mine in Utah U.S.A. has been excavated to a depth of some 800 meters below surface. The pit covers an area of approximately 7.5 square kilometres. Until the late 1980s, about 3.5 billion tonnes of ore had been extracted, seven times the amount of material moved to build the Panama Canal (Goudie 2000). If, in gold mining, the volume of earth that has to be extracted, moved, and separated was accounted for, a simple wedding ring would weigh up to 3.5 tons (Weizäcker et al. 1997: 242). For most raw materials the ratio of resource extracted to the material moved to extract it has been assessed. It may be as high as 1: 0.65 for sand and gravel and as low as 1: 350000 for platinum. Schmidt-Bleek (1997: 43) baptised the masses moved as ecological backpacks specific for every kind of raw material mined. In 1991, the Worldwatch Paper 109 “Mining the Earth” stated that more material was moved through resource extraction than all rivers of the Earth would carry to the seas. It was Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 316 also estimated that mining consumes about one tenth of the overall world’s energy production. In some cases, mining pits extent to city borders, as the brown coal pits in Germany do, where gigantic excavators are digging up enormous holes in the direct vicinity of cities such as Halle and Leipzig. Since 1947, German brown coal mining has forced some 100000 people to abandon their homes and to move to other places. Waste rock not used for further processing is piled up on waste heaps of which the first ones had conical shapes that did not correspond to the natural landscape. They were neither covered nor vegetated and consequently contaminated the surroundings with toxic dusts and acid drainage. In former Eastern Germany, for example, conical spoil heaps from former Russian uranium mining have caused the return of a disease that has already been known since mediaeval times as “Schneeberger Disease”, i.e. cancer caused by radioactivity from, in those days, metal mining activities. The second generation of spoil heaps showed first signs of improved design. The slope angle was lowered and vegetation was introduced. The third generation of heap design aims at creating a natural morphology integrated into the landscape, with an efficient cover system and a natural succession of vegetation. Deep mining (i.e. underground mining) further degrades land. Mineral processing industries, power plants, waste heaps, retention ponds, etc. occupy considerable spaces. Besides this, the natural morphology is also affected. Subsidence over mined-out workings may reach tens of meters as in the case of the German Ruhr District where the maximum subsidence has now exceeded 20 meters. In certain areas subsiding land has touched the groundwater table and secondary wetlands have developed. Georg Pawer (1494-1555), who became known under his Latin name Georgius Agricola, was the first to publish a critical review on the art of mining. In his work “De re metallica”, which appeared only after his death in 1556, he also indicated the adverse effects of mining on the environment: The woods and groves are cut down, for there is need of an endless amount of wood for timber, machines and the smeltering of metals. And when the wood and groves are felled, then are exterminated the beasts and birds, very many of which furnish a pleasant and agreeable food for man. Further, when the areas are washed, the water which has been used poisons the brooks and streams and either destroys the fish or drives them out (see Down & Stocks 1977: 7, Goudie 2000). Today, the impact of mining and processing can be quantified: When one ton of coal is burned an average five tons of earth and water has already been displaced. While burning, it produces more than three tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Manufacturing a midsize car entails the production of fifteen tons of solid waste plus a considerable amount of wastewater. Even a product as simple as a newspaper still bears an ecological backpack of some ten kilos (Weizäcker et al. 1997: 244). It goes without saying that the extraction and transformation of resources consumes a considerable amount of land and biodiversity associated with it. In many cases the speed of land consumption is difficult to quantify, since reliable data is missing. For simple resources such as sand and gravel, typically observed in the direct vicinity of cities, an assessment of the land consumption pattern can be made. Gravel and sand are mainly needed as aggregates for concrete production, road building, drainage beds, etc. According to German statistics, the national demand for gravel and sand per capita is in the order of 5 cubic meters per year. It has been estimated that the extraction of 1 ton of gravel and sand consumes about 0.2 square meters of land. Consequently, every German uses up about one square meter of land through All objects could become garbage 317 gravel and sand extraction every year. This corresponds to a total land consumption of 2.5 square meters per second. The exploitation and transformation of more complex resources goes along with an even higher rate of land degradation. It is, in fact, estimated that of the 2000 square kilometres of land degraded by all industries in the European Union until the early 90s, some 20% can be attributed to coal and steel industries alone (RETI 1992). Industrialisation is directly associated with population growth and the spreading of cities. In Germany, for instance, the amount of land used for city development amounts to some 100 ha (or 120 football fields) per day. In the United States, the rate of land consumption is estimated to be at least ten times higher. In order to halt the excessive consumption of ecologically intact land or “greenfields” the British Government for examples has decided that 60% of all new housing shall be established on used land or “brownfields” by 2015. Similar initiatives can be observed in other European countries. The tendency is clear: Urban development of the future will be directly associated with the relicts of former use, notably the waste produced in former times and the various types of soil degradation due to resource exploitation and transformation under the dictate of fast profit (Genske 2007). Space becomes rare. Still, industrialised societies demand additional space to stock those wastes that can be neither re-utilised nor further reduced. These wastes are dumped on landfills. Early landfills were established on greenfields just outside the cities. Due to the growth of the cities, these landfills are nowadays integrated in the city infrastructure, often no longer used and of no use to anyone. An example (after M. Forter: Bonfol or a lecture on waste, Die Weltwoche, 20/ 2000, translated by the authors): Until World War II the Rhine River served as dustbin for the chemical industries of Swiss and German cities. Before 1860, production refuse - to a good proportion hazardous wastes - were stocked at the banks of the Rhine behind the factories. Then, for about ten years, it was dumped through a bottom hole of the middle bridge directly into the Rhine. Later the waste was grinded and washed with sewage into the Rhine or dumped into the river by special waste ferries. The dry summers of the late 1940s, the increasing water demand of the city and the booming chemical industry of Basel finally brought waste managers to re-think their disposal practice. They were forced to halt their waste dumping routine and began to search for land-based disposal sites. Ciba Industry started to export their chemical wastes to the neighbouring city of Weil am Rhein in Germany. However, German environmental authorities soon banned this waste trafficking, concerned that groundwater resources would be spoiled for good. Ciba consequently had to divert its waste to the Swiss City of Muttenz some five kilometres southeast of Basel. Ciba and Geigy ignored the fact that the Muttenz pit borders the aquifer utilised by the City of Basel as water reservoir. In 1955, the Swiss Water Protection Act was introduced, forcing Sandoz Industries of Basel, still following the convenient Rhine dumping practice, to haul its chemical waste to a French gravel pit at St-Louis, just across the border. When, in 1957, serious contamination of the surroundings of the Muttenz pit became obvious to everybody, Ciba and Geigy followed the example of Sandoz and screened neighbouring French and German communities for handy dumping sites. They found them in the Hagenthal-le-Bas, Neuwiller, Hirschacker, Grenzach,… It took until 1960 for the German and French authorities to put an end to the illegal dumping business at their Swiss frontiers. Basel’s chemical industries were left sitting on their waste, with neither Swiss nor foreign communities ready to take it. A dumping site further away was searched for and finally found some 40 kilometres west of Basel in Bonfol, a small and poor village in the Swiss Canton of Jura, close to the French border. The old clay pit was quickly filled with chemical waste of which no record was kept. Already six years later the citizens of French Pfetterhouse complained over toxic clouds coming from the landfill. Ciba officially denied the existence of such clouds, while its own experts stated in internal Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 318 reports that the contamination of the surroundings violates about all civil regulations and environmental laws. Nevertheless, the Basel newspaper Nationalzeitung declared Bonfol an “exceptionally well-designed landfill” … Waste that either leaches or produces hazardous substances has to be stored securely in order to avoid a contamination of the groundwater. When an appropriate basal lining system is missing leachate loaded with hazardous substances can infiltrate into the subground and spoil groundwater resources. Furthermore, industrial and hazardous waste sites are known for emitting noxious gases and to contaminate the surroundings by littering and dust blow. Landfills are usually covered daily with a layer of soil that later is compacted like the waste beneath it. A landfill that is covered daily is referred to as a “sanitary” landfill. Odours, litter and pests are restricted and the likelihood of fires is reduced. After decommissioning, a watertight cover system is installed, preventing surface water from percolating through the waste body, which would have to be pumped and treated. If money and know-how is missing, however, the landfill cannot be sealed properly, posing a continuing thread to its surroundings. The Love Canal Case (Niagara Falls) is only one of many examples illustrating the consequences of landfill gases contaminating an urban terrain. The scandal eventually resulted in the passage of the Superfund Act in 1980 by the U.S. Congress. If not designed with caution, the slopes of a landfill may be subject to failure. Although design procedures have been developed to lay out stable slopes, the parameter necessary for the calculation are difficult to retrieve. This is due to the inhomogeneous nature of waste, the alteration of strength properties during the maturation processes, chemical reactions that change the material properties over time and the destabilising action of water percolating through the unsealed surface of the landfill. In 1996, one person was killed when a 14-storey high landfill slid into the village of La Coruña, Spain. In 1966 a slide of colliery spoil engulfed a number of buildings at Pantglas, Aberfan, a village in South Wales, England, formed around an active colliery. It killed 144, mainly schoolchildren. With increasing population and only limited resources available conflicts arise over their distribution. This may lead to military confrontations that generally go along with a profound degradation of the environment. Aspects of this scenario include the destruction of strategically important targets as well as collateral damages and the contamination of land with chemical, biological and nuclear warfare agents. Bombs and shells as well as manoeuvring military equipment destroy the soil structure. Unexploded bombs and landmines make the terrain unsuitable for re-development. Destruction of strategically important production plants and service installations releases toxic substances that are produced, processed or handled in these facilities. As a consequence soil, surface watercourses and groundwater may become contaminated. In the course of the Kosovo Conflict in 1999, for instance, the New York Times quoted a NATO spokesperson as saying, “NATO had two types of targets. There were tactical and strategic targets. The oil refinery in Pancevo was considered a strategic target. It was a key installation that provided petrol and other elements to support the Yugoslav army. By cutting off these supplies we denied crucial material to the Serbian forces fighting in Kosovo. When targeting is done, we take into account all possible collateral damage, be it environmental, human or to the civilian infrastructure. Pancevo was considered to be a very, very important refinery and strategic target, as important as tactical targets inside Kosovo” […]. A major secondary effect of war is certainly the migration of refugees fleeing the battle zones to settle temporarily at places so far not touched by the conflict. In many cases, refu- All objects could become garbage 319 gees seek shelter in larger cities or close to them, where they build camps in the outskirts, still close enough to benefit from services the municipality may offer. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR the number of people displaced by armed conflicts has reached some 22 million at the beginning of the 21 millennium. If all were gathered at a single place, this would equal the population of Canada or Kenya. The movement and settlement of refugees has many different environmental impacts such as the depletion and pollution of water resources, soil erosion, deforestation, degradation of biodiversity, as well as social and economic stress. The pressure put on local communities by migrating people may lead to over-use and finally disruption of environmental services, which may eventually cause a long-term deterioration of the urban environment. Even in times of peace land may be degraded due to the installation of military bases. Although military bases are often located away from cities, they may also be found right next to them, some were even the reason why a city was founded. At military bases troops exercise warfare, be it simple artillery shooting or airborne targeting. Furthermore, weapons are produced, conditioned and stored. Equipment is moved and maintained and wastes from all these activities are dumped. Consequently, the site degrades. Remediation is necessary before the site can be integrated into urban use. A good example of how military bases can degrade the environment is given by Erlebach & Müller (1998) who investigated the Former Russian barracks “Heidekaserne” in Halle/ Saale, former Eastern Germany. The 200 ha site is located between the historic centre of Halle, a city quarter of a later epoch, a national park, and the river Saale. The area has not been accessible to the public for nearly one and a half centuries, until Russian troops retreated in 1991. From 1897 to 1935 the site was a guarded hospital for the mentally ill. In 1935, the Reichswehr established a military school on the site, to which an airstrip was added later. During the Second World War the site was attacked and bombarded, which however caused only little damage. Immediately after the war the Soviet Army used the site again as military base, with up to 21000 soldiers being stationed there. From 1968 onwards, more military facilities were added including extra barracks, shooting ranges, storage facilities for shells and missiles, garages, maintenance facilities, etc. In 1991, after the fall of the wall, the Russian army retreated. To the first who were allowed on the site a devastating scenario unfolded: Nearly all barracks and facilities were out of repair, pipes and containers were leaking, at places soil was heavily contaminated with fuel, oil, paints, solutions, etc. causing serious groundwater contamination. Unidentified wastes including rubble, tires, scrap, ammunition, demolished vehicles were dumped at many different places. All in all, some 100 tons of ammunition fragments of various kinds were spotted and extracted. 300 000 tons of soil were identified as contaminated and had to be extracted. 400 000 tons of waste had to be removed from waste pits that were never secured or sealedoff according to landfill standards. Six tank batteries were discovered, including a central one with 60 individual tanks. 173 underground tanks had to be extracted and 600 cubic meters of remaining fluids had to be pumped. 19 filling stations had to be investigated. In conclusion, land basically degrades as a consequence of the exploitation of resources, their transformation into goods and the associated production of wastes. Conflict may arise over the distribution of resources and goods, which eventually further degrades land. Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 320 2.2.2 Conflict, space, waste and boundaries Waste operates in the twilight zone of the indeterminate, a third sphere, whose relationship to “nature” and “culture” sheds new light on the relationship between order and its Other. An analysis of this relationship indicates the blurredness and fluidity of their boundaries at any given time. It shows the self-contradictory approaches of cultures, societies, and economies which, by producing waste and garbage on a large scale, simultaneously create their boundaries and the potential to destroy them. Such an analysis would have to deal with the game of rejection and reabsorbtion. From this third perspective, Vilém Flusser proposes the analysis of waste as a further category of cultural analysis, traditionally opposing “nature” and “culture” without acknowledgement of a third: Faced with the fact that millions of people worldwide depend on garbage and waste for a living, it seems appropriate to consider this third sphere, which obviously maintains a link to its manufacturers. The most important impetus behind garbage production remains “innovation” - described by Schumpeter as “creative destruction” - which for the last two centuries has enabled industrial societies to channel virtually all global resources through the processes of production and consumption. The generation of obsolescence is one of its effects, the exhaustion of so-called raw materials and human labour a prerequisite. Innovation also has a spatial aspect relating to the questions of the boundaries of garbage and waste, which can be observed in abandoned industrial areas, agricultural installations, and land that has fallen to waste. These testify to a constant and constantly accelerated creative destruction. It originates from a nucleus where a new ordering activity is emerging, and creates space around it that no longer corresponds to this new order and is consequently “trashed”. The places where innovation flourishes are garbage-free zones, spaces destined to create a future order, surrounded by its “garbage”, i.e. its chaos, its desemanticized, undifferentiated, and ignored zones. The foundation of an order and its accompanying spatial structure through the demarcation of a pure “inner area” has already been described by Leroi-Gourhan through the example of prehistoric societies dating back to the 30th century B.C. He interprets it as the act through which, “originating from one point, order is created in the surrounding universe”: “The entire space is carefully purged; outside one stumbles upon occasional heaps of rubble, and scattered along the slopes are the ‘waste dumps’, small heaps of ashes, sprinkled with gravel and tiny fragments of bone. The moment in evolution in which the first pictorial representations emerge therefore coincides with the distinction of living space from the chaos of the surrounding environment. The role of man as organizer of space appears here as its systematic arrangement …” (Leroi-Gourhan 1980, 396-7). The model, in which Leroi-Gourhan describes the relationship between human domiciles and garbage or waste, can be applied to many well-known historical and the majority of contemporary efforts to come to terms with garbage and waste. This includes Sicilian sanitation regulations in the 12th and 13th centuries, the 15th and 16th centuries (which witnessed a spate of similar municipal regulations in France and the regions of the German Empire), and the 19th century during which numerous measures were adopted in all large European cities to banish sewage and garbage from the sanctity of the clean city area. The latter differ from earlier attempts to separate order and cleanliness from garbage and waste in the following characteristics: the extent of planning, the practice of concentrating wastes, the complex technical innovations and mechanization of the processes (Hauser 1992), the volume of waste, All objects could become garbage 321 and furthermore the production and usage of new materials which differ qualitatively from all former substances. The beginning of the 20th century saw the development of non-degradable materials that re-enter the material cycle only after a previously unimaginable period. The production of synthetics and new toxins represents the qualitative leap in the treatment and disposal of waste in industrialized countries and in all countries where these materials are used. Garbage and waste disposal, however, conforms to a pattern still resembling that existing 30 centuries B.C.: First, a border established through definition and legally enforced border is drawn around an inner area, which is to remain “pure”. Second is the prescribed, systematic, and occasionally centralized expulsion of undesirable materials from this defined area to an “outer” area, generally imagined as boundless, of unlimited capacity, and frequently as unpopulated. The aim is to make garbage and waste “disappear”, and where this proves impossible, to at least remove them to a place that does not encroach on the “pure inner area”. The methods of “making disappear” include dumping, burial, leaching, and incineration. An almost magical aura surrounds the “disappearing act” consisting of dumping wastes in the ocean. The pure inner area most discussed and cultivated in the 19th century is the metropolis, the big city. More and more, sewage is conducted through centralized and systematically structured canalisation systems into rivers, and the outskirts of most cities are dotted with both controlled and uncontrolled dumps. Occasionally, impressive solutions are found, which seize upon the metaphor of the city as organism, and attempt to establish a “recycling chain”, for example, by setting up sewage farms (Rieselfelder), which, however, soon gave way to the more economically viable garbage disposal system of incineration. In many cases, the margins of the city no longer provide sufficient space: Urban and industrial zones grow up side by side, particularly in the densely-populated industrial countries of Europe, giving rise to powerful clashes between rival interests. River pollution interferes with certain manufacturing processes and the maintenance of a minimum water quality, local soil and water resources grow scarce, uncontrolled dumps occupy space and damage the environment. Industrial wastes, some of them toxic and hazardous, increase absolutely and relative to other sources of garbage. Various nuisances develop, sometimes leading to a search for new “outer areas”. In the 20th century, mostly countries with extensive territories designate “outer areas” within their own national borders for aggressive waste. Countries capable of directly disposing of hazardous wastes in remote, sparsely populated regions or areas populated with undesirable minorities or ethnic groups continue to engage in this practice. In China, factories, test sites and nuclear waste dumps are located in areas such as Xinjiang, which, until settlement by the Han was increased, was populated almost exclusively by Turkic ethnic groups. In the USA, the most favoured potential dump site for highly radioactive material, Yucca Flats, Nevada, is situated in an area to which the Western Shoshone have a claim. The atomic industry looks primarily to the reservations of the indigenous population for their permanent and provisional dumpsites, affecting most recently the Cree in Saskatchewan, Canada. In the former USSR, the factories and waste dumps of high-risk industries are mainly concentrated in areas whose populations are of no concern to the government. It is ultimately states and state alliances that define their territory as inner space and plan and organize its “purity”. For many years, the more prosperous industrial nations suffering from tangible environmental problems - and that mainly means problems of waste disposal - managed to keep their garbage from their own door by exporting it to other countries. A more recent example of this is the plan to build a nuclear dump to be shared internationally on Bikini Atoll. Approximately 80% of the waste trade is conducted between the industrial- Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 322 ized countries, but 20% takes place between developing countries of the First World and importers from the Third World. Government-supported opposition is growing in many of these countries. The waste trade with former East Bloc countries also continues to thrive. It provides a spectacular example of the failure of the West’s “waste removal” methods. The collapse of the “Wall”, one of the most impenetrable borders of recent times, has brought the waste exported from western countries back to their centre of interest. Unification has restored to the Federal Republic of Germany a toxic “treasure” that was supposedly safely incarcerated “over there”. When the Wall collapsed, the states of Hamburg, Lower Saxony, and Hesse alone had exported an estimated 700000 tons of hazardous waste to the GDR. One of the most immediate steps taken after the collapse of the Wall was the official inspection of approximately 5000 waste dumps; it resulted in the closure of most. Approximately 2% of the dumps in the area of the five new states were still in operation in 1993. The general practice of relegating waste to “outer areas” has resulted in the almost complete absence of waste-free areas, i.e. areas wholly untouched by waste. Today the world seems full of waste. The boundlessness of waste, increasingly present in public consciousness over the past thirty years, has various aspects which seem to be more or less under control. These include knowledge of the quantities of particular substances produced. But there are no clear global figures on the volume of existing or projected conventional or hazardous wastes. Current estimates suggest that approx. 5 million tons of hazardous waste are produced in Germany and approx. 250 million tons in the USA each year. Global estimates vary considerably. This is due to a lack of data even in some countries that otherwise boast the most advanced systems for collecting socially relevant data. By 1990, among the EU countries, only Holland, Denmark and Germany had begun nationwide documentation of so-called “existing burdens”. One of the boundaries bridged by certain types of garbage is the one between waste and merchandise. This bold leap allows many forms of garbage and toxins to be exempted from existing Waste Acts. Additionally, sometimes waste is simply treated as “raw material” on the international market. In 1987, varnish and oil residues containing heavy metals were designated for export to Turkey as “substitute fuels”; in 1988, combustion residues from the city of Philadelphia ended up in Guinea as “raw materials for the brick industry”; in 1991/ 92, the Treuhandanstalt exported toxins from a number of German states, particularly pesticides akin to those used in chemical warfare, disguised as a consignment of goods and humanitarian aid to the vicinity of Sibiu in Rumania. Waste plastics stamped with the “green spot” indicating their status as raw material ended up on garbage dumps in Indonesia and in Hungary for incomprehensible “recycling”, etc. The daily papers are rife with more recent examples. This method of defending the “pure inner space” approaches the boundary between legality and illegality. The exact figures on illegal waste transactions are still debated by experts in environmental administrations and pressure groups, but there is no doubt that more cases of illegal transactions go undetected than become known (see Basel Convention www.basel. int). A further boundary is bridged by some sorts of atomic waste, known to constitute a hazard for living organisms for tens of thousands of years. This length of time defies human imagination. Precautionary measures for such a time span are virtually inconceivable, since it is impossible to make any reliable predictions concerning geological movements in landfills or set up institutions for monitoring dumps until the material ceases to be radioactive (Posner ed. 1990). All objects could become garbage 323 Waste crashes through barriers of time and space. This affects both national and continental borders not only in terms of waste export. The dispersion and effects of wastes such as HCFC are not contained within the borders of the manufacturing or consuming countries or of the continents producing the highest levels of emissions. Combustion residues are a typical example of trans-frontier pollutants. Waste transcends frontiers of knowledge. We do not know all of the substances produced in industrial processes and entering the air, water and soil. Scientists investigating synergistic effects cannot even determine the number of probable new chemical compounds, not to mention make any kind of reliable assessment of their qualities and effects. The multi-dimensional boundlessness of waste is a result of the fact that the emphasis has so far been placed on removing it to a non-defined “outside”, rather than on finding ways of avoiding its production. The “pure inner spaces” were precisely demarcated, while attempts to put limits to waste through the development of alternative production processes, improved consumer awareness, or modifications of economic systems proved sporadic and inconsistent. During the 19th century and up to the start of the environmental debate in the 20th, the idea that waste could resurface in the form of air, water and soil pollution remained the eccentric view of a few pessimists. Today, in the rich and densely-populated countries, the level of debate alone is enough to make it clear that a dynamic has developed in the cultural, social definition of frontiers drawn around pure inner spaces. The subversive power of this area expelled from the realm of order has become visible and palpable, more accessible to the senses and to knowledge. Public opinion suggests that the entire relationship between (our) order and its waste and garbage must be reviewed and restructured. We live in an order preoccupied with redefining and relimitating its own waste, while it continues to produce more and more of it. The strategies developed to contain waste can be subsumed in one question: How to limit garbage and successfully guard these limits. The limitation attempts operate on different levels: the legal definition of substances (garbage, hazardous waste, existing burdens, etc.) and the creation of legally binding regulations for their disposal, the inventory and description of existing garbage (e.g. the documentation of existing burdens; compulsory registration of hazardous waste, etc.), the securing of discontinued and operating dumps, the development of technical facilities to eliminate wastes with the lowest possible levels of pollution, the development of recycling methods and corresponding new product designs, and restricting the international waste trade. To mention just one of these difficult processes: efforts to implement a legally binding definition of garbage has become a burning political issue. Negotiations on waste at national and European levels or in the context of UN states are complicated by the fact that the definitory limitation of garbage varies according to the interests of the economically powerful pressure groups and countries. Interest is determined by the existing volume and quality of garbage and waste, the safety of production plants and their projected lifespan, the industrial structure, the waste disposal facilities, and other factors not necessarily based on environmental criteria. Such endeavours contribute to throwing a net of order over the realm formerly interpreted as disordered and to integrating and assimilating it in the order, rendering that realm identifiable, definable, and ultimately containable. Order itself changes through this extension and revision of its boundaries. The necessary containment of garbage will inevitably lead to an increase in reducing, domestically processing, eliminating, and disposing in the waste-producing countries and to the export only of “raw materials”. Germany’s Waste Disposal Act of November 18, 1988, Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 324 which rules that international disposal of waste is only legal if the waste is to be “recycled, processed, or recovered”, reflects this tendency. Such developments, however effective they may be, do not take place without necessity. Only since it has become obvious that the “outside” to which garbage was traditionally consigned is shrinking, that the pressure to establish new processes has increased - which does not mean that the analysis and solution of the situation are advancing at the same rate. This is an important element of a broader development, which is in the process of changing our notions of inner and outer, nature and culture, globality and locality, centre and periphery, thereby expanding the area of control and planning. In this way it follows the logic of expansionism. 3 Rationales, discourses and excurses The semiotic dimensions of sign interpretation on derelict land are complex and manifold. When writing this lecture, we realised that we can only scratch on the surface of this cosmos of ideas, perceptions and views. We have tried to embrace this intriguing topic by reducing it to basic scientific practice juxtaposed with semiotic implications including a short history of the conceptualization of “contamination”, aspects usually not discussed in the process of investigating a derelict site. The result is a sequence of three discourses on waste, two rationales on site investigation complemented with two excurses on maps and soft signs. 3.1 Discourse I: The discovery of hazardous wastes Not until the prolonged end of the European heavy industry and the end of the most conspicuous emissions connected with it, did public attention focus on the wastes left behind in its wake. The issue of “dangerous wastes from the past”, or Altlasten (German), a problem of contamination, was first identified in the 1970s as a general problem, and not just as a question of individual instances, in England, France, the Netherlands, the United States, Germany and also Japan. During that time, the first, since then extended legal instruments for the assessment of hazards and the definition of objects to be protected emerged. The interpretation took place in a time of intensive economic decline in the heavy industry. The problem has been constituted as such since the decline of heavy industrial production, when the old industrial sites began to change hands usually for public disposal, and the question of reuse arose. The present discourse about what is understood as dangerous wastes from the past - contamination - refers to the remains which are capable of generating undesirable effects if they are not treated. The discursive effort does not have anything to do with the fact that whatever has been leading to the resulting definitions and actions since the 70s actually did not exist previously: Contamination understood as such today have to some extent been produced over centuries in the areas of early industrialization and have seeped into the soils and water resources without any comprehensive, systematic efforts existing at the time to acquire data, clear, cleanse or secure them. The consequences of permanent pollution were certainly noticed, however, they were registered as accidents or disease cases. The semi-public discourse in the form of complaints, entries, and public letters about the pollution of rivers, soils and the atmosphere by the All objects could become garbage 325 industries in the old industrialized countries is as old as some of these remaining substances themselves noticed today as contamination. Observations of changed plant growth, the restlessness and diseases of animals and cases of illness among human beings which could in part be brought into a causal connection with the specific emissions have been frequently made. Wherever clashes of interests occurred in any of the old industrialized countries there were regulations governing risk and liability rights that could usually be derived from the already existing water and soil rights and had in part to be codified separately as in the case of the mining laws. Historical environmental investigations with respect to industrialization could show for some cases the fact that and the ways in which economic interests asserted themselves successfully in not having to treat those wastes. (Brüggemeier & Rommelspacher 1987, 1992, Brüggemeier 1995; Brimblecombe & Pfister 1990; Radkau 2002: 274-83.) During the period of industrial production, considerations of critical substances in the water resources and soils were hardly of any interest even when the facts were known or suspected. In so far, the handling of contamination as it has been developed in the last 30 years can be seen as part of a revelation process involving the old industrial sites. Franz-Josef Brüggemeier und Thomas Rommelspacher present four reasons for the late attention given to toxic substances in soils: In contrast to the air and water resources, soils were assumed to be part of private property where no intervention should take place; soils seemed to be resilient with respect to pollution; the methods of measurement had not matured sufficiently and, finally, the role of soils within an ecological context had not been fully appreciated until the 1970s (Brüggemeier & Rommelspacher 1992: 75). A final word on the observation of wastes: There are some terms that are repeatedly used in a planning context when dealing with difficult-to-manage industrial remains, burning dumps or toxic substances. These are the terms hazard, safety, security, protection, risk prevention, suspicion, and control. Especially, the last-mentioned term will have to be examined here since hardly a discovery - and it is discoveries and the discourse about them we are concerned with here - has extended the sphere of the observable, determinable and controllable to the same extent as the preoccupation with unstable soils and slopes or toxic substances in water resources, soils and the atmosphere. Hardly any other circumstance has enlarged the scope of required data acquisition and planning with state-of-the-art expertise to such an extent than the attention given to “hazardous substances” whenever an old industrial site is designated to be reused. In this connection, a slow, intermittent discussion presents itself in all the old industrialized countries seeking to develop legal and technical definitions for an actual hazard and its pragmatic prevention. In this process, the general term contamination (English/ French) or Kontamination (German) as well as the spatial term Contaminated/ Derelict Land (British), Brownfield (U.S.), Site pollué (French), Altlast (German) are being constituted as the object or problem, and are leading to further investigations, added data acquisition, and new methods as the now traditional Site Investigation Approach. 3.2 Rationale I: Historical site analysis In order to analyse signs of degradation the historic development of a terrain has to be reconstructed. In this context, signs of former use have to be identified and recorded in a systematic way. Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 326 Historical site analysis - also referred to as desk study - focuses on the former utilisation of the site and the resulting degradation of the terrain. The main goal of the historical or multitemporal analysis is to investigate and visualise the impact of human activities and their consequences for future utilisation. The historical analysis is based on textual records such as former site investigation reports, environmental audits, building and production permissions, statistical data on products including information on raw materials and wastes, property tax files, land title records, newspaper archives, private documentation, etc. Nontextual records complement this information. Relevant cartographic documents ranging from cadastral to topographical maps are available for a period of more than 150 years. The cycles of updating these plans and maps have varied from originally 15 years to 3-7 years more recently. As a result, those sites existing since the 19 th century are documented by up to 20 updated editions of large-scale topographic maps (1/ 25000 and larger) and more or less the same number of plans. Furthermore, additional nontextual documents such as maps of existing and earlier buildings and installations, previous street directions, evidence of water supply and sewage systems, fire insurance maps, safety plans, mining commissions, landuse maps, biotop maps, etc. offer valuable information on the historical development of the site. In addition, aerial photos serve as a useful source of information to reconstruct the historical development and former utilisation, especially if cartographic material is missing for certain time periods. The earliest coverage in Europe dates from the 1920s. It is supplemented by photography from allied reconnaissance and mapping sorties during World War II and thereafter by air covers taken at regular intervals of 2-3 years since 1950. Consequently, there is an aerial photographic documentation of most sites comprising 15 to 25 and sometimes even more covers, which are available for the historic analysis and mapping of urban land. Finally, oral textual information from eyewitnesses may explain details of the production, the handling of waste material and the localisation of possible dumping sites. The most complicated task is harmonising and visualising the essential information. A map depicting former utilisation based on the status quo-map has to be prepared. Of central interest are features which may obstruct the future utilisation of the site, including • soiland groundwater contamination and • relicts of former installations such as massive foundations and underground constructions. In order to detect these obstacles, historical maps and aerial photos are analysed, scanned and superimposed with the status quo-map to produce a thematic map depicting the historical development of the site. Buildings and installations that may obstruct the future utilisation are copied into that map as are possible sources of contamination due to activities of production and handling of polluting substances (at train stations, loading sites, etc.), or their deposition (waste heaps, dumping sites, etc.). An example: The coalmine Minister Stein used to be one of the most productive deep coalmines in the German Ruhr-District. Already in the last half of the 19th century mining commenced and subsequently a variety of processing facilities and chemical plants were founded in direct vicinity. However, due to the coal crisis the mine went out of business in the 1980s. The site was abandoned and became typical industrial wasteland, too contaminated for potential investors. However, the still intact infrastructure of the immediate neighbourhood and the proximity to major Autobahns made it attractive again. All objects could become garbage 327 In the late 1980s European funds were made available to remediate the site. Eight million Euro were drawn from the European Fund for Regional Development to support the project and plans were made to integrate Minister Stein into the International Building Exhibition IBA Emscherpark. The site became a prominent example for conversion of derelict terrain into high quality industrial land. In order to assess the hazards related to former use the first step was to prepare the status quo-worksheet illustrating the present situation on the site. After this, historic maps and aerial photos were scanned and significant features were imported into the status quo-document. The scans had to be adjusted in scale and rotated to match the status quo. Based on the historic maps and building permits the historic development of the site could be reconstructed, i.e. installations and facilities suspected as potential sources of contamination could be identified. Digital layers were prepared representing historical stages of development. Finally, a synthetic map with all relevant historic information was produced (see slide series “Investigation: Desk Study” under http: / / www.egs-net.ch/ mysite/ htmls/ openlearn.html). 3.3 Excursus I: Maps and Signs The analysis of maps with the tools of semiotics has to be considered a new field, although its roots reach back to the times when the first modern maps where drawn, as Bruno Aust, Dagmar Schmaucks and Winfried Nöth point out in their introduction to the edition Landkarten als synoptisches Medium (1998). One can even go back to ancient history to discover semiotic processes in land interpretation: already four centuries BC the Greek physician Hippocrates geo-referenced in his work “On Airs, Waters, and Places” (e.g. Littré 1961) spatial phenomena as signs for health and reasons for diseases. Cartography as “ensemble des opérations de conception, d’élaboration, de dessin et d’édition de cartes” (Petit Larousse 1998) is a semiotic exercise par excellence, a formalised process to visualise phenomena with a complex system of signs. Even time can be formalised with cartographic signs (Genske & Hess-Lüttich 1998), as realised already by Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who interpreted from geomorphological signs that (according to Blei 1981, translated by the author) … da bald ein Meer ist, wo vorher ein Fluß war, bald sich Berge erheben, wo vorher Täler sich vertieft hatten … Aber in allem möchte ich nichts Gewaltsames zugeben, sondern einen ganz und gar natürlichen Verlauf erkennen. Denn ich nenne nur dasjenige gewaltsam, was außerhalb der Schranken der Natur oder gar gegen sie geschieht. [… there soon is a sea, where before was a river, mountains rise, where before where valleys … But in all this I would not see anything violent, rather a natural development. Because I only call violent what happens outside the boundaries of nature or even against her.] However, to put these findings on a map was, in those days, too much to dare when even words were already enough to be executed by the Holy Inquisition as a heretic. Maps, however, would have had a potential to logically explain the relation between time and the surface of the earth with a limited set of signs arranged in a systematic way and a special colour code dating back to Goethes Concept of Colours (Hofbauer 1998). Cartographic representations with their iconised reduction of complex processes enables the expert to present geomorphological phenomena in such a way that even the layman is able to understand them. Describing linguistically these complicated processes would mean much Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 328 more effort, still yielding a puzzling and confusing result. Cartography thus optimises a difficult and interwoven transfer of space-time information. The process becomes even more complicated if the information to be transmitted is ambiguous or fuzzy, having only a limited truth-value. Fuzzy information are, however, quite common when analysing brownfields, the object of this lecture. Only in few cases it is really clear which activities have caused the contamination of soil or groundwater. Usually there are only hints and speculations about presumed waste pits that where dug informally, not recorded in any official document. War impacts, which have caused pollution and in cases still cause pollution, are only sporadically documented. Even fragments of now dismantled installations such as foundations, cables, sewers, tanks, culverts, etc. are missing in maps and records. Still, a large variety of information are available that come in textural and graphical formats: description of production processes, statistics and mass flows, company records, building permissions, official surveys, geological maps, exploration boring profiles, aerial photographs, to mention a few. The decisions based on the evaluation of all these information are decisive for the feasibility of the remediation project as they are for the future of the city quarter, possible job opportunities, major investments … Consequently, an optimised strategy to investigate brownfields is needed to identify, record and visualise zones characterised by contamination and underground obstacles (Genske 2003). Since most of the information is fuzzy or soft, a well-reflected investigation strategy has to be developed which processes all sorts of information, from crisp data to semi-information of reduced truth-value. We will come back to this point after the following, second discourse on waste. 3.4 Discourse II: Contaminations Wastes incurring treatment problems have been discovered on industrial wasteland and dump sites since the 1970s: Lakes of tar, unlined earth basins filled with naphta products, soils polluted with benzene, toluene, xylene and polycyclic aromatic carbohydrates due to accidents, carelessness or normal operation, for example, during the production of carbohydrates. Slag, clinker, and construction waste contaminated with dioxines, for example, after the demolition of chimneys pose further categories of possibly critical materials; in former ore mining areas, heavy metals as well as highly toxic metals such as thallium or arsenic can be found. These are substances that are given priority in the discourse about soil damage with undesirable repercussions. An overview of the treatment of “Wasteland areas and land recycling” in various countries, among them Japan, the USA, Canada, can be found in Genske & Noll (1995). A comprehensive display of the aspects considered today when confronted with “Land recycling and contamination” is given by Thein 1995 in the same volume. Here, I am going to focus on the British, and, later on (see Discourse III), the German development. In the 1970s, the institutionalized treatment of contaminated land was added to that of derelict land in Great Britain. This term describes “land that contains toxic substances in such concentrations that they present a potential threat directly or indirectly to man, the environment or to other targets such as building structures or the components of buildings.” (Richards 1995, 23) While derelict land referred essentially to physically describable damage and instabilities, chemical and biological aspects now come into play. The category of contamination is constituted as an object of discourse and as a cause for a new kind of managing practice. All objects could become garbage 329 From a semantic perspective, the term describes an interesting option. The common use of the term contamination (Kontamination), and the definition of the removal of the damage, decontamination (Dekontamination), present a suggestive image of that which has occurred and should be reversed: Something has been infected by something else, made sick or spoiled, contaminated as it were. Thus there was something that was pure and intact and then came into contact with something else and therefore became disrupted in its properties. Decontamination describes the process in which the previous boundary between substances and bodies is reinstated since something which was adulterated in an impermissible and uncontrolled way has been withdrawn again. The fact that this is not always successful, is exemplified by the contamination through radioactive substances. Speaking about decontamination suggests that there was a process that was reversible. It implies that whatever was brought about in damage in the period of industrial production can be reversed today. The time and consequences of industrial production can be physically cancelled. Once the discovery and invention of the contamination has taken place, the internal expert discourse about a generalized suspicion begins to focus on the soils and water resources on industrial wasteland and to engender the preparedness for unforeseen, but to-be-considered toxic substances on industrial sites: “In practice, when dealing with industrial land it is never possible to know precisely what contamination exists and where it is” - according to the landscape planner Richard Cass (1994: 34). The generalized interest in substances remaining after production, however, is only slowly mobilizing efforts to acquire data on them. In the mid-1980s, it was estimated that there was about 45000 ha of derelict land to be treated, which means to stabilize it and at least to vegetate it if it cannot be used in any other way. Later estimates attempting to consider contaminated land raised this amount to twice as much. However, this includes already treated land whose contamination was not considered during the restoration work. In wake of growing attention, increased knowledge, and new issues, increasingly new demands are being placed on the management practice concerning industrial wasteland and deposits from industrial production (Barry 1995: 281). The disclosure of investigation results and the publication of lists as well as registrations of contaminated sites have met and are still meeting with resistance. In 1990 when the British government included the requirement enjoining local government agencies to compile a register of contaminated sites or land uses endangered by contamination into the Environmental Protection Act shortly before its enactment, it brought about a storm of publicized indignation. The requirement was interpreted as an immediate demand to disclose current contamination on public and private land. Especially the real estate sector and some local administrations quite rightly foresaw a blacklisting effect on sites that would not be able to be sold as a consequence of the register (Lawton 1994: 18). In almost all old industrialized countries, there is still a more or less restricted right on behalf of property owners to say nothing about the condition of their property, which in turn seemed to be jeopardized by this proposal. The requirement was dropped. In the United States, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980 has been aiming in the same direction. With the installation of the SUPERFUND in the same year (SUPERFUND 2007) to clean up contaminated terrain, Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 330 a National Priority List for the most polluted sites was established. In practise, however, this list had the effect “of causing the site, plus much of the adjacent area, to be abandoned for any use, and severely depressed property values. Therefore (this) listing is avoided by local governments and property developers …” (Williams 1995: 22). However, the obstinate reticence in combination with the realization that hazards could be lurking in the dark elicited curious responses: These ranged from diffuse fears and suspicions and well-founded anxiety to insistent not-wanting-to-know. Since it is publicly known to be possible to find out something about the contamination of areas, buyers and users of a plot now want to know whether or not this knowledge has been taken into consideration: The uncanny feeling following the suspicion can only be rationally abated once the possible knowledge has been acquired. There is now a de facto compulsion to investigate, confront the waste and, as it were, confront what has been previously repressed. The magazine Landscape Design dedicated a whole issue to the question of contaminated areas in 1994. It describes how a planner from a local government agency in Britain compiled the requirements resulting from the failure of the listing of contaminated land: “… an awareness of the issues; a lack of fear of the problems; an adequate information base; a clear definition of the responsibilities; a fair and easily understood legal framework; adequate resources for investigation and techniques and a short and long term programme of action.” (Lawton 1994: 19). In the case of any knowledge or suspicion of hazardous substances, systematic data acquisition with an added guarantee of comparability has not been practiced until recently even in those countries with comparably high environmental standards and sophisticated data acquisition systems for publicly relevant data. In 1990 only the Netherlands and Denmark were among the countries of the European Community with a systematic method for nationwide data recording of substances compiled in the listings of Altlasten (see “Brachflächenrecycling” 1993-2000; the home page of the US Environmental Protection Agency http: / / www.epa.gov). The aim to stimulate clean-up work was, however, not achieved with these measures. More by accident, the European Commission finally solved the contradiction of disclosing lists of contaminated sites while at the same time depressing remediation efforts as observed in the case of the US National Priority List: The vicious circle was solved with motivation. Naturally, money is the best motivation. Consequently, the EU has been avoiding any listing but has been giving subsidies to those communities, which presented, together with partners from industry, a remediation project that stimulates regional economic growth while at the same time implements Agenda 21 locally (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). With this strategy, the EU enforced the notion of a sustainable development while at the same time stimulating new, innovative industries in regions depressed by structural changes as for instance the German Ruhr District, where many contaminated sites were remediated in this context and presented during the International Building Exhibition IBA Emscherpark 1989-99 (see European Academy 1995). 3.5 Excursus II - Fuzzy signs Signs of contamination are rarely clear and unambiguous. In general, they expose only a certain level of truth. Since terms such as certainty, uncertainty, vagueness, ambiguity, imprecision, fuzziness, variability, soft data, etc., are frequently used in hazard analysis, it is All objects could become garbage 331 necessary to define the most essential of these notions and their use (Genske & Heinrich 2003). Webster universal dictionary (1993) defines certainty as follows: something undoubted and inevitable. The same dictionary defines uncertain as follows: ambiguous, vague, doubtful, dubious, equivocal, indeterminate, indistinct, questionable, insecure, changeable, irregular, not steady or constant, variable, etc. This list demonstrates the linguistic or lexical flexibility and vagueness of the spoken language. Zimmermann (1996) states for certainty in a real-world model that “certainty (…) indicates that we assume the structures and parameters of a model to be definitely known and that there are no doubts about their values of their occurrence.” Assuming that hard data is available from field sampling, two principle uncertainties can be distinguished (Blockley 1980): Parametric uncertainty, i.e. uncertainties in measured values of parameters, in terms of statistical probability, and systemic uncertainties, i.e. non statistical uncertainties. In context of non-statistical uncertainties, the notion of fuzziness has been introduced by Lotfi Zadeh in 1965. Fuzzy can be described by synonyms: flurry, like fuzz, blurred, (Webster dictionary 1993) and indistinct (in shape and outline), frayed (Oxford Advanced Learners 1989). Fuzzy set theory or possibility theory is a generalisation of the classical Cantorian crisp, i.e. dichotomous set theory, and represents a means for manipulating non-stochastic, i.e. nonrandom uncertainty. In contrast to common crisp mathematical approaches that include probability theory, fuzzy sets allow grades of membership to a set usually expressed by real numbers between 0 and 1. This concept (Zadeh 1965) provides a natural way of dealing with problems in which the source of imprecision is the absence of sharply defined criteria rather than the presence of random variables. However, similar aspects have been already discussed in principle by Aristotle in his treatise “On interpretation” (Aristole ‘On Interpretation’, paragraph 7, translated by E.M. Edghill): When […] the reference is to universals, but the propositions are not universal, it is not always the case that one is true and the other false, for it is possible to state truly that man is white and that man is not white and that man is beautiful and that man is not beautiful; for if a man is deformed he is the reverse of beautiful, also if he is progressing towards beauty he is not yet beautiful. Being an extension of two and many-valued logics, the main advantage of the fuzzy approach is its capacity to combine available data, expert knowledge and (subjective) experience in order to mimic real-world conditions more realistically. As an approach to dealing with uncertainties induced by imperfect knowledge, data, and signs of varying intensity it complements other theories such as evidence theory, rough set theory, and probability theory. However, there is still an ongoing controversial discussion, for instance, between supporters of the fuzzy approach and protagonists of the crisp probabilistic approach. The debate reduces to the question, whether fuzziness would be just probability in a clever disguise (Bezdek 1994). However, it can be stated that the philosophical and academic controversy, as necessary as it is, clearly has been passed by successful fuzzy applications. Fuzzy mathematics is especially applied in industrial controlling, in rule based Fuzzy Expert Systems (FES) in medicine or economy and increasingly also in environmental and geoscientific modelling. Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 332 Just as the classical (crisp) set theory serves as the basis for classical logic, fuzzy set theory is the basis for fuzzy logic. This means that theoretic operations in fuzzy sets are the base for logical operations (Alvarez Grima et al. 1997). In contrast to the classical set theory, a fuzzy set consists of objects that can have a partial degree of membership in a set. The classical set theory, instead, deals only with binary statements such as yes/ no, true/ false, or 0/ 1. Hence, these so-called crisp membership degrees to a set are either equal to 1, if an element belongs to a set, or 0, in case of exclusion. Fuzzy set theory generalises the concept of crisp set membership by extending the range of the characteristic function to the unit interval of [0,1]. The membership function JA(x) is called the grade of membership of x in a fuzzy (sub-)set A that lies within the universe of discourse X. In normalised fuzzy sets, the membership degree can take partial membership. Larger values denote higher degrees of membership. Fuzzy sets are defined by their membership functions, which are therefore the core of the entire concept. There are three possibilities to represent fuzzy sets: • Representation in a continuous domain, i.e. analytically defined by their membership functions • Representation in a discrete domain as value pairs • Graphical representation. Examples of continuous piece-wise linear functions are of trapezoidal and triangular shape and examples of continuous piece-wise exponential membership functions are the L-, G-, Pand L-(Gauss-) functions: These standard membership functions are only an approximation of the way humans linguistically interpret real values. Studies in psycholinguistics showed that piecewise exponential functions proved better performance in complex systems (such as language and perception) than more simple linear ones (Altrock 1995). Therefore, they are considered to describe environmental systems better, i.e. more organically. These basic membership functions are the basis of fuzzy sets within fuzzy subsets such as quantities, toxicity, size, etc. Fuzzy subsets can, for example, describe certain properties of observed items in an aerial photograph. In a study on a derelict harbour terrain (Genske & Heinrich 2003) up to three fuzzy subsets form a fuzzy family, that is a thematic group, such as material, with the subsets toxicity and quantity. Altogether, fuzzy families constitute the fuzzy power set describing the universe of discourse, including the potential to codify spatial signs of contamination. In this context a Soil Assessment Fuzzy Expert System (SAFES) has been developed to process signs of contamination from aerial photos taken at different time steps (Heinrich 2000). The outcomes of a SAFES consultation is coded in contamination potentials related to observed items, such as installations, surface discolorations, necrotic vegetation, etc. The development of the knowledge-and-rule base of SAFES is based upon characteristics of environmental relevant signs, the specific range of features (spatially and temporal), their relative intensity, as well as a semantic code for description of the observed items. The semantic descriptors helped to define values, shape, and number of membership functions over a certain part of the universe of discourse. Fuzzy sign processing enables the expert to visualise phenomena that are much too complex to be presented in textual form. It optimises interpretation processes of a manifold nature. Keeping in mind that a conventional preparation of hazard maps calls for a substantial All objects could become garbage 333 budget (field work, laboratory analyses, etc.) it can be concluded that fuzzy sign processing offers an attractive alternative to analyse degraded urban land. 3.6 Discourse III: The German approach - The Altlast In Germany, the first public attention given to problematic wastes on old industrial sites neither arose from any systematically sought-for and developed knowledge nor from the preparedness to take action on the part of the government agencies. Here too, examinations of sites with respect to possible restrictions of use were undertaken in connection with the late consequences registered as accidents. In Germany, broader public attention to what is understood as Altlasten developed when agencies were groping for explanations for inexplicable events such as the contamination of settlements built on old industrial land. Just as in the Love Canal Case, which finally led to the US Superfund Legislation (Lecture 1), the discussions were triggered also in Germany via so-called inhabited Altlasten. Among the examples are the settlements of Hamburg-Stolzenberg, Bielefeld-Brake, or also Dortmund-Dorstfeld, Herne-Baukau or Essen- Zinkstraße known since 1979. In Northrhine-Westphalia more than 10 percent of the “areas of suspected wastes from the past” were built up in 1991 (Grosser & Schmidt 1994: 14). The German term to a great extent corresponding to the English contamination and used in legal as well as non-specialized public discussions is Altlast (dangerous waste from the past). In the first (German) federal soil protection law passed in 1998 Altlasten are defined as “old deposits and old sites causing harmful changes to the soil or other hazards for the individual or the general public.” In this law as in the diverse definitions of the laws of the Länder (states) two concepts are pivotal, viz. those of hazard and harm, both criteria which appeal to eco-toxicological evaluations. This definition can already be implicitly found in the special report of the German Council of Experts for Environmental Issues “Sondergutachten des Rates von Sachverständigen für Umweltfragen RSU” of 1989, published in 1990: “an old deposit or an old site from which hazards to the environment especially to public health are to be assumed or expected”. The German Federal Soil Protection Law, published on March 24, 1998, adopts these definitions in its 3rd part, 11-16. The term “dangerous waste from the past” like the discourse about contamination certainly involves normative connotations. In dealing with them we are concerned with burdens. In a narrower sense it is a legal term, in a less specialized sense it is a term that by all means expresses a negative interpretation: Altlasten entail pollution stemming from closed processes and are now understood in terms of fault, damage, obstacle, or hazard and are addressed as a problem of law enforcement. What immediately crosses our mind when speaking about old burdens (German: “Alt”- Lasten), is the fact that the liability for cannot be traced and is usually not relevant for the transfer since, with the exception of mining in connection with mining laws, no claims, responsibilities, or ensuing actions can be derived. The slow integration of Altlasten into public discourse is also shown by the fact that, until spring 1998, there was no law in Germany which regulated the definition, data acquisition, responsibilities and the treatment of substances of this kind comprehensively on a nation-wide basis; this law finally makes land owners and perpetrators liable. And not until the recent years, have state laws been developed containing explicit regulations for the crucial legal concepts concerning the treatment of Altlasten. Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 334 I have to stress here, that Altlasten are only assumed to comprise substances and sites located on areas that have been given up, however, not the possible deposits on areas that are still in use - these are only included in exceptional cases, and treatment through public agencies is only considered when a hazard to the public has been ascertained. In Saarland where an average of two areas of suspected contamination per square kilometre are to be found according to the records in 1996, a law of this kind was not passed until June 1994. The reflection prior to this and the practical consequences drawn from this, shown here by an agent of the Saarland environmental ministry, serve as an example of the development that is gradually taking place in steps of performed quantification, definition, data acquisition, and finally, qualification as contaminated areas: “The first approaches towards a systematic and state-wide stock-taking of the old dump sites of the communities, commercial and industrial facilities in Saarland reach back as far as 1965.” The aim of this data acquisition, however, was only to determine the areas of deposits in quantitative terms; no assessments of the hazards were performed. Based on these first activities as well as on a survey of 1400 plants in Saarland carried out by the LfU (Landesamt für Umweltschutz, S.H. - akin to the EPA on a state level) in 1980 designed to survey deposit locations with respect to production-specific wastes, the communal waste treatment association Kommunale Abfallbeseitigungsverband (KABV) supported by the LfU published a study in 1984 which dealt with the environmental hazard potential of all of the 738 old dumps known in Saarland until then. With the help of an evaluation key based on a point system, an assessment of the possible environmental hazards or Altlasten was carried out for the first time on a state-wide level with special consideration of the deposited material, the distance to water protection zones, water supply plants, surface water bodies, and housing areas, etc. On the basis of this information, the systematic development of a Saarland old-deposit land register Altablagerungskataster (ALKA) was begun with in 1986. Due to an intensive study of the records, the questioning of local people with knowledge of the area, but also through the evaluation of topographical maps and aerial photographs, the number of recorded old deposits was more than doubled from 738 in 1984 to 1801 at present. … The development of the Saarland old site land register Altstandortkataster (ALSTOR) was begun with in fall 1990. … In the historical survey of old sites only those former sites of potentially hazard-suspected industrial and commercial businesses were considered whose areas were no longer used in a way to cause suspicion at the time of the survey. (Sobich 1996, 6ff) The preoccupation with Altlasten has been picking up momentum in Germany since 1989. In the new federal states (neue Bundesländer) the heavy industry suffered a breakdown after the fall of the Wall. The mass of suddenly available industrial land that was difficult to sell not only mobilized data acquisition but also considerations to initiate clean-up treatment as a necessary precondition for future economic development. During that time, concentrated efforts to define the object and to create the necessary legal and funding instruments were made. This did not only accelerate the awareness process concerning Altlasten and their systematic data acquisition in the new and old federal states, but also lead to the designation of 21 major projects for clean-up treatment with respect to such wastes in the new federal states. They were going to require 6 billion German Marks in clean-up costs according to estimates publicized in 1994 (Federal Environmental Ministry 1994, p. 26). In 1988, between 42000 and 48000 suspected areas were identified in the old federal states (Henkel 1988: 18ff). At the end of 1993, almost 140000 areas and suspected areas with All objects could become garbage 335 Altlasten were recorded in Germany based on diverse criteria. In 1994, it was estimated that a total 240000 areas and suspected areas of varying sizes with Altlasten were to be found; at the end of 1998 the estimation went up to 300000 sites (Federal Environmental Ministry 1994: 7; Grosser & Schmidt 1994: 13; Freier et al, 1998: 1). The registration of these areas can be interpreted as an extension of the definition and control over areas that had not previously been defined or controlled. In so far, the discourse about Altlasten highlights the efforts to catch up with the realities, which seems to generally characterize the state of waste management today: Added to the concept of risk prevention, is the objective to recycle wasteland and to reuse land understood as a resource. A scope of necessary control is also defined exceeding any previously known controlled containment of wastes. 3.7 Rationale II: Hazard Assessment Once the historical analysis (or desk study) of a degraded site has been concluded, a field reconnaissance is conducted. Field reconnaissance aims at confirming the findings from the historical analysis in the field. Additional information relevant for the project is collected and simple index tests on ground properties are carried out. An integral part of the field reconnaissance work is the identification of zones that are homogeneous with respect to certain properties. Field reconnaissance work thus includes a description of: • The ground conditions, i.e. the types of ground (soil/ rock), the mechanical properties of the ground and the hydraulic properties of the ground. • The flora and fauna that has established on the site and its relevance to soil types, depth to groundwater table, ground movements (slope creep, subsidence, etc.) and contamination of the ground. • Features of human impact confirming the former and present use of the site. Thematic maps with data from the field reconnaissance work illustrate problematic ground conditions and redevelopment obstacles. The field campaign is summarised in an interim report in which the results are commented and interpreted. Based on these findings the feasibility of a possible redevelopment project can be assessed. According to the recommendation of the reconnaissance report the project may have to be modified or, in certain cases, even discarded. If the project, however, appears feasible, the field reconnaissance report serves as reference to prepare the next step: the field investigation. The aim of field investigation is to optimise information on the condition of the site and thereby minimise remediation costs. In this final stage of site investigation much prior information is available since both historical analysis and field reconnaissance have already been concluded. It is now better known where ground contamination is likely. Some contamination spots have already been confirmed in the field. Derelict buildings have been investigated and sectors where underground structures can be expected have been mapped. This allows a well-considered choice of field investigation measures, which are more sophisticated but also more expensive than the index tests of field reconnaissance. It is evident that a sound knowledge of the geology of the site, a comprehension of the desk study and the field reconnaissance results and profound experience is necessary to lay Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 336 out an adequate field investigation campaign. Some sectors of the redevelopment site may still be little known despite the preceding desk study and field reconnaissance work. In this case, the sampling strategy depends on the type of search target and whether discrete ones like underground structures or gradual ones like a groundwater contamination are to be investigated. The search pattern to be applied varies accordingly. A large variety of methods to explore and characterise ground conditions has been developed: • 1D-investigation, i.e. linear investigation like borings; 2D-investigation, i.e. area investigation like geophysics; 3D-investigation, i.e. spatial investigations like pumping tests. • Direct investigation or indirect investigation: borings, for instance, are direct measures whereas geophysical investigations, cone penetration tests, etc. are indirect methods. • According to the goal of the investigation campaign, addressing either the general ground conditions, or the hydrogeology, or the stress and strain characteristics of the ground, or the contamination of the terrain. An integral part of the site investigation on derelict sites is the analysis of hazards associated with the reuse of the terrain. On abandoned land a large spectrum of pollutants can be encountered. The hazards caused by these contaminants depend on the existence of contamination pathways, the exposure of the receptor (plants, animals, humans, goods such as the groundwater), its capacity to take up contaminants, the exposure time and the dose. In a real world scenario it is difficult to take into consideration all these parameters at a time. When soil or groundwater samples are taken and analysed, concentrations of different contaminants are measured. These concentrations can be evaluated according to simple rating systems as for instance proposed by the Dutch recommendations, which consider three threshold values: • The background value, giving the natural concentration of the contaminant. • The test value, indicating the need for further site investigation if exceeded. • The intervention value, calling for immediate decontamination measures if exceeded. Threshold values are listed in reference tables. In certain countries, the future utilisation of the site is taken into consideration when defining thresholds. For instance, derelict industrial wasteland may be fit for use as sports ground but not as kindergarten terrain. The fitness-for-use concept has been introduced to reduce remediation costs and to stimulate the re-integration of abandoned land into the urban infrastructure. Threshold values and fitnessfor-use values are revised frequently, while research on toxicological impacts evolves constantly. While hazards refer directly to the probability of occurrence of an adverse phenomenon such as contamination, risk is defined as this probability of occurrence times the consequences arising from the given hazard. Therefore, in order to assess risks the consequences have to be quantified. This is, however, in general not possible, especially if goods are under consideration of which the value can hardly be assessed, as for instance human health. To simplify hazard assessment for urban land, the danger caused by ground contamination can be visualised with three key parameters (BUWAL 1994): All objects could become garbage 337 • The contamination potential, i.e. the toxicity of the pollutant detected. • The mobilisation potential, i.e. the potential of the pollutant to find a contamination path to a possible receptor. • The potential of exposition of the receptor, i.e. the good to be protected. These three parameters define three Cartesian axes. On these axes the potentials are scaled from zero, i.e. no hazard potential, to 1.0, i.e. full hazard potential. The potentials may either be assessed intuitively or calculated with more complex evaluation techniques. Maximal hazards are thus represented by a cube, whereby partial hazards produce a smaller volume. Today, a variety of different hazard assessment procedures have been developed all over the world (e.g. CARACAS 1998, 1999). In most cases the hazard assessment is based on the identification of contamination grade, mobilisation potential, the exposition of goods to be protected, the identification of source-path-target-patterns and the definition of threshold values. Hazards can be mapped by taking soil and water samples and measuring their grade of contamination. The results can be plotted as point information on a map depicting the contamination intensity. Contour lines of equal contamination grade can be drawn. Once the spatial distribution of contaminants is visualised, potential hazards for the groundwater to be protected, human health, neighbouring ecosystems, etc. can be derived. Besides the contamination of the derelict site the physical disturbance of the ground may obstruct the redevelopment of the terrain. On industrial sites a complex pattern of buildings, installations, traffic connections and supply facilities is present, which has modified the natural ground conditions. Key aspects are: • Disturbance of the natural ground conditions by foundations, basements, tanks, culverts, creating a highly inhomogeneous ground referred to as urbic anthrosols • Sealing of the ground with roads, parking lots, and constructions, resulting in a reduction of infiltration of rainwater and thus a reduction of the natural recharge balance of the groundwater. Once the natural ground conditions have been altered, the physical behaviour diverts from the one expected on virgin ground. Soft brought-in soils or waste may be located right next to sectors of natural soil. After buildings have been dismantled, the foundations are almost always left in the ground. On industrial wasteland, these foundations can attain considerable dimensions. If they stay in the ground, they obstruct the redevelopment of the site by blocking future cable and sewage lines. They complicate excavation and, if left in the ground, cause differential settlement of new buildings. Consequently, the investigation of hazards on derelict industrial wasteland not only refers to chemical contamination, but also to physical disturbance. The systematic collection and analysis of all information, crisp ones as well as soft ones, finally leads to the hazard assessment, which is usually presented in the form of a hazard map where hazard levels are coded and zoned in a comprehensive way, so that everybody involved in the remediation project can understand the specific legacy of the site and the threads a future utilisation will bear. Dieter D. Genske & Susanne Hauser 338 4 Final remark In this paper the first two lectures given for the Open Semiotics Resource Center are published. They address the codes of waste and the codes of degradation and explain how signs of degradation are interpreted in order to investigate derelict terrain. The third lecture shall focus on the integration of signs of former use and degradation into future use. 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