Safety recommendations
Working through the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR) UBA advanced the idea of increasing safety levels at installations by also improving the safety of individual key functional units (storage, handling, pipelines, etc.). In the following years technical safety recommendations for action were formulated for ten functional units, which the ICPR also recommended be implemented in the Member States.
By 1999 accident-related water pollution in the Rhine river basin had declined by over 99% compared to the levels which were common in the 1970s and 1980s.
These successful approaches were transferred to the newly founded International Commission for the Protection of the Elbe (IKSE) in the early 1990s, then to the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) at the end of the 1990s, and the International Commission for the Protection of the Oder at the beginning of the millennium, and to the UNECE. In the meantime more than 30 international harmonised guides have been developed for various relevant functional areas, industries or specialised sectors of industry.
A further area of focus for UBA in recent years has been its collaboration on the UNECE Convention on Industrial Accidents and UNECE Water Convention. A Joint Expert Group to the two conventions, with central coordination by UBA, developed safety guidelines for "Pipeline Safety" (2006/7), for "Tailings Management Facilities" (2008/9) and Oil-Terminals”. The guidelines were approved by all UNECE member states. Following the 2010 red sludge accident in Hungary, the authorities in Hungary are revising the inspection guidelines based specifically on this Safety Guideline for Tailing Management Facilities (TMFs).
In the framework of Advisory Assistance Programmes in Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan in 2013-2022, a methodology for assessing TMFs was developed and checklists on this topic were created.
Also, an UBA advising assistance programme for transboundary risk management in the Danube delta jointly developed a safety guideline for oil terminals with the UNECE. And recently we`ve set up an international expert group under the auspices of the UNECE JEG, to develop safety guidelines for fire-water management and retention. The central measure which was still an outstanding dept as a consequence of the “Sandoz” accident in 1986.
Checklists
Although the safety guidelines provide for a basic level of facility safety, the implementing authorities are still confronted with the problem of which real measures to apply to ensure this safety. This is why the German Environment Agency (UBA) started in 2000 to elaborate on the safety recommendations/guidelines and draw up checklists which - combined with a catalogue of measures - enable a concrete strategy for the implementation of the required safety level.
Checklists also provide an excellent basis for training programme instruction for inspectors. Such advisory assistance projects make it possible to provide a systematic overview of the safety concept, offering a uniform benchmark and helpful recommendations for potential clean-up action to countries within the UNECE region and all the way to China.
These checklists are now being further developed by China's Emergency Response Center in collaboration with Tsinghua University and the Environmental Monitoring Station of Jilin. The German checklist was taken as a starting point as was the classification of hazardous chemicals. In addition to water pollution, the Chinese checklist has taken up air pollution.
