Restoration of sediment quality for environmental reasons is not at all common practice yet in Europe. However, owing to the implementation of the EC Water Framework Directive this situation will change, since the objective of 'good ecological status' has to be met in 2015. This will have to change the policy in many EU Member States as (most) current policies only require efforts for meeting water quality targets. Hence, for Europe a key-issue related to sediment management will be the restoration of historically contaminated sites.
It is clear that at some sites this will be needed to restore the ecological status. But at which sites and how to prioritise them at the basin scale? Wherever a poor ecological status is observed, the question will arise whether and to what extent this is really due to sediment contamination. What can we learn here from the (few) European and US sediment restoration experiences: did restoration really improve the ecological status?
Furthermore, who is going to pay for the restoration? Here the issue of environmental liability at the river basin scale will come into play. What consequence has the approval of EC Environmental Liability Directive in this perspective? What is the state-of-art in tools we have to trace the responsible polluters and are they good enough to hold in court (if it comes that far: here there is a cultural difference between Europe and USA)?