Cleaning up Switzerland's industrially polluted sites could cost $4 billion and take a generation to carry out, Swissinfo reported yesterday. The country has 50,000 sites polluted by industry, government and private concerns, of which 3,000 require action in the next few years, according to the Swiss Environment Agency.

Agency representative Bernhard Hammer said the dangers associated with those sites range from contaminated groundwater to dangerously high gas emissions. The government would supply about $1.6 billion of the $4 billion needed to clean up the sites, Hammer added.

Greenpeace's Matthias Wuthrich said much more money is needed for the cleanup, as much as $40 billion. The environmental organization is pleased with recent national legislation requiring organic waste from industrial processes to be collected and burned - an effort to preempt a scandal like that in which large chemical companies dumped 114,000 tons of solvents and other pollutants at Bonfol in western Switzerland over a 15-year period - although it has reservations about incineration.

Nevertheless, Wuthrich said, history has shown that only enormous pressure has forced corporations to clean up their environmental messes. The Bonfol site clean-up took four years and cost $228 million (Armando Mombelli, Swissinfo, Jan. 5).

Copyright, National Journal Group, 2004