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Assessment system of areas used for urban solid waste disposal

SUMMARY:
In Brazil, 40.49% (Abrelpe, 2003) of all domestic and public solid waste produced, totalling around 96,302 tons a day, involves unsuitable disposal (in open-air dump or flooded areas, controlled landfills, unfixed sites, etc.). In many of these cases the leachate drains directly into the soil or water bodies near the landfill with pollution risks of these natural resources.

The dynamism of urban space causes a constant succession of soil uses in most Brazilian cities. When a waste disposal site is deactivated, its mere abandon may be hazardous to the environment and communities around it. The deactivation of the areas used as a waste dump, later being reused without undergoing proper treatment, in addition to devaluing the surroundings, deteriorating the image of the town or city and even causing cuts in the urban network, exposes the population to contamination and may cause potential hazards of environmental degradation. This paper proposes an assessment system of areas that were used as urban solid waste disposal sites, normally without infrastructure for environmental protection. Even if they receive or have received care in terms of environmental protection for some time before their closure, these areas do not normally have documented background on the events occurring there. Only after the Rio 92 Convention, some early control procedures, albeit modest, were taken by the agencies in charge, on aspects relating to environmental protection against this kind of urban occurrence. A large number of those dumps have been receiving waste for well over ten years, leaving it untreated in the open air with no environmental protection infrastructure. The proposed assessment system establishes criteria for classifying urban solid waste fills whose activities are being closed down, and for those that were already closed for a longer period, considering the potential contamination caused by their leachate. Indicators of potential environmental and health hazards are used to rate these areas. They consider the volume of the waste landfill and age of the last waste disposal on the site; the depth of the groundwater and permeability of the saturated zone of soil under the waste landfill; proximity of the landfill to housing, commercial and industrial centres and special sites in relation to the environment; topography and morphology of the area and the water balance of the site. The paper is the result of a two-year field study (Schueler, 2005) in the area surrounding the urban solid waste landfill in Paracambi, a town close to Rio de Janeiro city. This study included tests of physical characterizations of soil, permeability tests in the field and laboratory, column tests on distribution and spread of pollutants, physicochemical and chemical analyses of soil samples at various depths and of the underground and surface water downstream from the landfill. The prime purpose was to create a tool to help decide which activities are to reinsert areas used as waste disposal sites in the suitable urban context. The result of the assessment will point to different levels of care in relation to the procedures to be adopted with regard to its closure and later monitoring.

Copyright:	© European Compost Network ECN e.V.
Quelle:	Orbit 2006 (September 2006)
Seiten:	8
Preis:	€ 4,00
Autor:	Adriana Soares de Schueler Prof. Dr. Sc. Claudio Fernando Mahler
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