In November 2009 NICOLE held a workshop in Douai, France about site closure.  
  
The proceedings of this meeting are now available for download at:  
http://www.nicole.org/publications/library.asp?listing=1 
  
  
Historic land contamination has arisen through a variety of past practices that did not take account 
of the environment, including processes of industrial change as businesses changed on a site.  These 
changes may have been triggered by a forced closure (for example as a result of an industry going out 
of business), a planned sale or a planned relocation.  These processes of change continue today. 
 It is important that these changes to do not give rise to land contamination of the future.  Consequently 
disengagement from a site needs to be handled as an environmental management process.   
The objective of this workshop was to understand how site closure can be conducted in a smooth and 
effective manner.   Its topics included:   
•	Examples of remediation cases under complex site closure conditions  
•	Cases of site closure that either went as planned or cases where there were lessons were to be 
learned.  
•	Social, environmental, legal/contractual or financial aspects