Reporting soil pollution or soil degradation

Have you noticed that soil in your area is polluted or damaged? For example, are there harmful substances in the soil of your garden or in your neighbourhood? If so, you must report this to your province as soon as possible. You must also report it if you carry out work that may pollute or damage the soil.

This is how it works for you

Your (future) place of residence falls under:

Province of Gelderland

Here is some information from your province.

Notify us of soil contamination or degradation

Once contamination and/or degradation of soil has been established this should be reported as soon as possible. This also applies if you carry out or have work carried out any activity that may contaminate, pollute or damage the soil. The activities referred to here are set out in Wet bodembescherming (Wbb). These include for example: activities that may result in erosion (decomposition), compaction or salinisation of the soil; activities that require certain substances to be deposited on or in the soil in order to affect the structure or quality of the soil; and other activities involving interventions or the use of substances that may pollute or damage the soil.

Conditions include:

The soil is seriously contaminated and the cause dates back to before 1987.
The soil is seriously contaminated.
You want to have the seriousness and urgency level of the contamination assessed and plan to remediate or have the soil remediated.
Municipalities are obliged to report contamination that may be serious.

We ask you to include the following information:

underlying soil surveys
Land Registry Office map (cadastral map) with contamination contour
soil remediation plan (in case of remediation)

The province of Gelderland should be notified as soon as contamination and/or degradation of soil has been established. Is the soil located in Arnhem or Nijmegen? Then the municipality in question should be contacted. When you establish contamination and/or degradation of soil the province needs to be notified as soon as possible. In your notification you should state which measures you intend to take to clean-up the soil or to limit degradation. The clean-up measures you can and must take depend on the type and extent of the contamination. For small-scale pollution, you only need to submit a notification Besluit Uniforme Saneringen (BUS-melding). If you have a postal address in the Netherlands you can use the web form soil pollution/ soil remediation notification. Do you live outside of the Netherlands? You can request an application form by contacting us via the question form on gelderland.nl or by calling +31 26 359 99 99.

These notifications are free of charge.

We need a maximum of 15 weeks to assess your notification, counting from the date you submit your notification. In complicated cases, we may extend this period by 15 weeks. You will be notified of this. You can request an accelerated procedure. In the accelerated procedure there will be no draft decision. The assessment will 6 to 8 weeks.

If you disagree with a decision of the province and have an interest in that decision? You can file an objection. Go to our website for more information.

If you have any questions please contact us by telephone +31 26359 9999.

Reporting Soil Contamination or Degradation