Study On Chinese Legal System Of Brownfield Cleanup

Since the industrial revolution, the process of industrialization rendered the city onthe track of rapid development. In addition to the prosperity gradually brought by theindustrialization, the city also suffered to some extent from some hidden dangers in itsdevelopment. People always like to transform the city structure and appearanceaccording to their own preferences arbitrarily in the hope that the city can be moresuitable for people’s development options. Such transformation activities have becomeever more intensified along with the rapid development of industrialization. With theadvent of the cities’ continued expansion and the post-industrial era, and in order tomaximize the use of urban land resources and to improve the quality of the urbanenvironment, the heavy industry, once the "economic engine" in the urban development,had been transferred from the city, leaving behind large devastated unproductive deserts.Such deserts are brownfields in this paper to be studies.Brownfields are abandoned industrial or commercial land, which tend to hide hugepollution problems, and they are bound to be with endless troubles if not redevelopedafter hazard-free treatment. The risks of brownfields are not just the business risk in theredevelopment process, but also an environmental safety risk, posing huge hiddendangers on public health that are living or working on them. During these years, caseslike Beijing Songjiazhuang subway station brownfield injury accident and low-costhousing in Wuhan Oriental Pearl District, which were reported by the media, had bothshowed us that, it is imperative to execute the work of Brownfield cleanup. Brownfieldcleanup is a matter which covers diverse aspects and is very complex, requiring not onlymature science and technology support, particularly the mature development of soilremediation technology, but also an effective and rational system guarantee as well.What is studied in this paper is the legal system of brownfield cleanup. Brownfieldcleanup should be supported by a sound legal system. In this paper, from the concept ofbrownfield and its status quo, brownfield cleanup legal system is discussed, and thedomestic and foreign Brownfield cleanup legislation and practical experience of thelegal system are compared with the proposal of the design and reconstruction ofbrownfield cleanup legal system countermeasures in China.Chapter I Overview of Brownfield Cleanup Legal System. From the basic conceptsof brownfield cleanup and brownfield cleanup legal system, the essential characteristics of the brownfield cleanup legal system and the exposition of the functions are discussed,combined with the development of the related study involved in brownfield cleanup inChina, a general positioning of the construction of legal system of Brownfield cleanupis given, which laid the foundation for the following discussion of brownfield cleanupsystem.Chapter II Legislation and Practice of the Legal System of Brownfield Cleanup.This chapter mainly focuses on the analysis of the legislative practice of brownfieldcleanup in foreign countries and the pro-active practices of brownfield cleanup inBeijing and Chongqing with the attempt to learn from its useful experience.Chapter III Inspection of Plight of the Legal System of Brownfield Cleanup. In thischapter, a critical analysis of the status quo of legal system built for the brownfieldcleanup in China is conducted, pointing out that the current brownfield cleanup in Chinaare faced with some plights in legal system. The plights of these systems not onlycontain the imperfection of the legal system itself in brownfield cleanup, but also relatedto the internal logic flaw of the legal system of the other environmental class, and theseare the obstacles to the sound development of brownfield cleanup legal system.Chapter IV Design and Reconstruction of the Legal System of Brownfield Cleanup.Combined with the present situation and the plight view of the development of the legalsystem of brownfield cleanup in China, and in conjunction with the legislative practiceof the legal system of brownfield cleanup abroad, the design and reconstruction of thelegal system of brownfield cleanup is proposed.Brownfield cleanup has become an urgent problem of urban development in Chinatoday. Since most of brownfield planning is for residencial or commercial purposes, theenvironmental safety of the public faces enormous challenges. To meet this challenge, aprinciple of “people-oriented” should be focused, and the legislation of brownfieldcleanup should be sped up, and the fetters constraining the institutional Brownfielddevelopment legal system should be improved to provide effective legal protection forbrownfield cleanup activities in China.