On 10 July 2013,
Costa Rican authoriThe Decree applies
ties issued a Decree
to companies
implementing rules on
manufacturing,
ground
conservation
transporting, using,
and remediation based
handling, storing or
on the concentration
transferring regulated
levels of certain regusubstances
lated substances (RS),
such as arsenic, mercury or polychlorinated
biphenyls, in the soil.
Decree 37757-S will enter into force as
of 10 January 2014 and it will affect persons
and corporations manufacturing, transporting,
using, handling, storing or transferring RSs,
whether for industrial, commercial or agricultural purposes.
The Decree implements a strict liability
scheme, meaning that the site-owner is responsible for maintaining low soil concentration values and for conducting and funding the
monitoring and remediation operations required
by the regulation, whether such site-owner was
or not responsible for high concentration values
or soil contamination.
The former requirements entails an obligation imposed on site-owners to measure soil
concentration values in their sites periodically.
For such purposes, the regulation provides a
list of substances with intervention values and
prevention values, both represented in milligrams per kilograms of dry soil. Prevention values represent thresholds, that when exceeded
trigger certain duties on site-owners directed to
prevent them from reaching soil contamination
levels, for example, monitoring programs. On
the other hand, intervention values imply soil
contamination, and therefore, trigger more
stringent requirements such as remediation
programs.
Enhesa Flash Nov/Dec 2013
Potentially polluted zones
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