Managing Legacy Pollution: A Legal and Policy Analysis of the Environment Protection (Management of Contaminated Sites) Rules, 2025

Abstract

Contamination of soil and water sources from hazardous industrial activities represents a persistent and serious environmental and public health challenge in India. Judicial doctrines like polluter-pays, precautionary principle and public trust along a patchwork of statutes provided tools for pollution control but lacked a statutory, site-specific remediation pathway for legacy contaminated land. The Environment Protection (Management of Contaminated Sites) Rules, 2025 is the first dedicated legal framework for identification, verification, declaration and remediation of contaminated sites in India. This article examines the 2025 Rules through a critical legal doctrinal and policy lens, situates them within constitutional and statutory architecture, and tests their provisions against institutional realities and international best practice like US CERCLA/Superfund, EU liability instruments and China’s soil law.

Drawing on official disclosure reports of the Central Pollution Control Board and Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and selected case study of Bandhwari landfill in Gurugram. The paper argues that the 2025 Rules are a necessary and progressive step but will only achieve transformational outcomes if matched by a stable national remediation finance mechanism, strengthened technical and institutional capacity at CPCB/SPCBs and a detailed liability rules for orphan sites and land-use holders. Along with this, a transparent and public monitoring system is also needed. Recommendations identify legal refinements and governance reforms to operationalise the Rules in a manner consistent with India’s constitutional environmental commitments.