National level
Bund/Länder-Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bodenschutz (LABO)
The LABO is the federal and regional-state soil conservation board of the Environmental Minister’s Conference (Umweltministerkonferenz, UMK), whose members are senior federal and regional-state soil conservation officials.
The LABO’s main goal is to promote harmonized implementation of soil conservation regulations and to recommend ways to optimize them. The LABO advises the UMK and the Konferenz der Amtschefs der Umweltministerien des Bundes und der Länder (ACK, conference of the chiefs of staffs of federal and regional state environmental ministries), and carries out the tasks assigned by these bodies.
The various regional states take turns chairing the LABO steering committee.
The LABO currently has the following three standing committees:
- Standing committee no. 1: the Recht (law) committee (BORA)
- Standing committee no. 2: The Vorsorgender Bodenschutz Recht (soil stewardship) committee (BOVA)
- Standing committee no. 3: the Altlasten (contaminated-sites) committee (ALA)
The contaminated-sites standing committee (ALA)
The ALA focuses on the technical underpinnings and implementation issues concerning identification, investigation, assessment, monitoring, cleanup and follow-up measures for the following:
- Suspicious sites
- Suspected contaminated sites and deleterious changes in the soil
- Contaminated sites
The various regional states take turns chairing the ALA.
Ingenieurtechnischer Verband für Altlastenmanagement und Flächenrecycling e.V. (ITVA)
The engineering association for contaminated-site management and land recycling known as ITVA was founded in Berlin in 1990, as a politically and economically unaffiliated organization, by committed site cleanup experts from both eastern and western Germany, backed by the then environmental minister Klaus Töpfer.
ITVA seeks to (a) promote cross-disciplinary dialogue among experts and interested parties; (b) aggregate competencies in the field of follow-up soil conservation measures; and (c) point the way to viable solutions for the numerous problems related to contaminated-site management and land recycling. The UBA is an associate member of ITVA.