Sanitation-sludge land-application licensing versus contaminated-land remediation duties: a comparative statutory analysis linking pollutant-pathway silence to liability allocation among biosolid receivers

Comparative statutory analysis of the licensing and remediation provisions in South Africa, England and Wales, and the United States shows that where land-application licences specify pollutant concentrations but not the pathways by which those pollutants migrate to soil, groundwater or crops, remediation statutes default to a generic 'contamination' trigger that assigns liability to the current or last occupier rather than to the biosolid producer. This pathway silence is not a neutral drafting omission but a liability-allocation mechanism: it converts the receiver of biosolids into the residual risk-bearer for pollutants whose origin the licensing regime never required to be traced. The contribution is a statutory-design account of how silence in one regulatory instrument redistributes risk under another, with implications for licence drafting, remediation-trigger definition and the standing of biosolid receivers in enforcement proceedings.