Federal government to help clean up soil contaminated with PFAS
Published: Friday, Nov 17th 2023, 16:00
Retour au fil d'actualité
The federal government is to contribute up to 40% of the eligible costs for the remediation of soils contaminated with persistent perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl compounds (PFAS). The Council of States' Committee for the Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy (Urek-S) wants to enshrine this principle in the Environmental Protection Act.
The committee voted in favor of this by five votes to zero with two abstentions when discussing a partial revision of the Environmental Protection Act. This was announced by the parliamentary services on Friday. This concerns, for example, fire department training grounds, which are often contaminated with PFAS-containing extinguishing foams.
The federal government should also be able to contribute up to 40 percent of the eligible costs for the remediation of sites contaminated by a waste incineration plant. This is what the Urek-S unanimously wants.
The committee concluded its deliberations on a partial revision of the Environmental Protection Act, which the Federal Council presented just over a year ago. The bill is now ready for discussion in the Council of States. The main aim of the partial revision is to speed up the clean-up of contaminated sites.
The state government places a particular focus on playgrounds that are located on polluted sites. In this respect, the Urek-S does not follow all of the Federal Council's proposals. For example, it wants to remove the basis for the cantons to renovate private children's playgrounds and home gardens - as well as the possibility for the federal government to pay compensation for this.
In this way, it wants to maintain the cantons' room for maneuver, which could also protect small children by restricting the use of the affected locations.
©Keystone/SDA
French 
English 
German 
Spanish 
Arabic