Ministerial Decree No. 555 regarding validation of the Regulation on the modalities of conservation of degraded agricultural land and land contaminated by toxic industrial waste and by nuclear waste.

The Government decrees to validate the Regulation. The Committee on Land Reform and Land Resources attached to the Government, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture together with other ministries and bodies concerned must provide for systematic activity regarding exposure and conservation of degraded agricultural land and contaminated land and control over carrying out arrangements for their restoration. The present Regulation establishes the modalities of conservation of degraded agricultural land and land contaminated by toxic industrial waste and by nuclear waste for the purpose of their preservation and restoration of soil fertility, improvement of natural conditions and protection of human health. Land is recognized degraded if as consequence of anthropogenic or natural factors there have occurred stable negative processes of change of the state of soil. Land conservation, or provisional exclusion of land from economic turnover is carried out for the purpose of the prevention of development or removal of processes of soil degradation, restoration of soil fertility and rehabilitation of contaminated territories. Conservation regards: a) agricultural land with heavily eroded, heavily saline soils, heavily swamped soils (as a result of flood or infringement of ecological requirements), soil subject to considerable desertification, soft soil as a result of the extraction of minerals, reindeer pastures with heavily damaged ground and vegetable topsoil when the purposeful use of the aforesaid land would lead to further development of the negative processes, deterioration of soil and ecology; b) land contaminated by toxic industrial waste and by nuclear waste over maximum permissible limit.