오염토양과 폐기물의 법적 구별과 그 처리책임

Lately, in Taihan Electric Wire Site Case, the Supreme court held that “contaminated soil” should be clean-up under the Soil Environment Conservation Act(“SECA”) and not come under the concept of the “waste” under the Wastes Control Act(“WCA”). At this time, I try to analyze the legal distinction between “contaminated soil” and “waste”, and the legal application to them. To put it concretely, I presents a brief overview of the Taihan Electric Wire Site Case. Then, I analyze the definition of the “waste” and its disposal under the WCA, and the definition of the “contaminated soil” and its clean-up. And, I show how to interpret relations between “contaminated soil” and “waste”, and apply laws to them. First, the “contaminated soil”, which should be clean-up under the SECA, is not “the soil damaging the health and property of people or the environment”, but “the soil whose level of contamination is found to exceed the worrisome level of soil contamination, and which is contaminated by one or more of 21 contaminants.” Second, the soil comes under the “substance” and may come under the “waste” in some case. Furthermore, the soil which is not separated from lands, which have become no longer useful for human life, may be included in the “waste” and come under the WCA. Third, the Taihan Electric Wire Site Case does not address the mixture of the contaminated soil and wastes. It focus on the question: Is the soil whose level of contamination of the PCB exceed the worrisome level of soil contamination included in the “controlled wastes”, which means the commercial wastes specifically enumerated as harmful substances, and Does it come under the WCA. Where the contaminated soil and wastes are mixed, the authority should order the responsible party who has generated or treated such wastes to treat them under the standards for waste treatment in the WCA, and order the persons causing soil contamination to clean-up the contaminated soil under the clean-up standards in the SECA.