Decision Making and Brownfield Management

The redevelopment of sites with the existence of historical contamination – in some specific cases most commonly known as „brownfields“ – contains still open questions, not only in Central European countries. North and South America have experienced cases which not only suffer from a scarcity of financial resources, but also institutional limitations. The redevelopment of certain old contaminated areas can be attractive, because it might become a potentially lucrative area for redevelopment projects that can also bring interesting job and research opportunities. The paper presents a recapitulation of studies concerning the application of the decision and stakeholder theories for the solution of environmental problems, focusing mainly on brownfield issues. We also analyzed the decision making processes in the management of contaminated land in the Czech Republic. Brownfield management still lacks legislation in the Czech context; however the treatment of ecological burdens of the past has been regulated within the process of privatization at the beginning of the 1990’s. The last part of the work focuses mainly on the remedial decision making for ecological burdens of the past in the Czech Republic. The main objective of this work has been to gather ideas from the local and international context, and to adapt them to the actual decision making processes of the management of historical contamination in the Czech Republic. We concluded that the tools provided by the stakeholder theory and the laws governing decision making, which are intended for setting remedial goals, are a key factor for the potential success of brownfield management. At the end of the work there is a suggested solution diagram for the decision making process in the management of historical contamination in the Czech Republic that integrates the main ideas gathered after our recapitulation of studies.