IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v2y2010i7p2219-2231d8999.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainable Technologies and Social Costs for Eliminating Contamination of an Aquifer

Author

Listed:
  • Mario Schirmer

    (Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Überlandstraße 133, P.O. Box 611, CH-8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland)

  • Horst Niemes

    (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Permoserstraße 15, D-04318 Leipzig, Germany)

Abstract

This case study deals with long-term contamination of the Leuna aquifer, which is intended to be restored using sustainable technologies financed by the state. The contamination can only be solved using active rather than passive intervention, because the aquifer has an extraordinarily low natural attenuation capacity for the specific pollutants. Due to the longevity of the contamination source, the groundwater treatment technology that was chosen for the site must operate for a minimum of 20 years but probably much longer. Since the polluter-pay principle cannot be applied, the estimated dynamic primary remediation costs must be accepted as a political or social cost, which must be paid by current and future generations.

Suggested Citation

  • Mario Schirmer & Horst Niemes, 2010. "Sustainable Technologies and Social Costs for Eliminating Contamination of an Aquifer," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 2(7), pages 1-13, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:2:y:2010:i:7:p:2219-2231:d:8999
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/7/2219/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/7/2219/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Veith Becker & Anssi Myrttinen & Johannes A.C. Barth & Peter Bayer, 2011. "A Summary on the Special Issue “Sustainability of Groundwater”," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 3(10), pages 1-4, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:2:y:2010:i:7:p:2219-2231:d:8999. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.