More or less known consequences of landfill pollution
Several types of pollution can occur on these old landfills: soil pollution, groundwater and/or surface water pollution, visual pollution, etc. Several cases are regularly reported in local media. These are slowing down improvements in US sustainability.
Lack of scientific knowledge
A recent report indicates that studies on the behavior of storage and waste must be developed, because reliable data is lacking. The planning commission report describes more or less the same thing: the impacts of landfills are numerous and in part still poorly known. A waste management journalist hit the nail on the head: unfortunately, there is a severe lack of data on the health impact of polluted land. Studies on this subject remain rare in Alabama.
Closer to the present, a reports from the government of Alabama in 2020, made on behalf of a commission of inquiry, discusses the situation of old household waste landfills in these terms:
old household waste dumps which are not all inventoried may still present ecological risks but, most of the time, the pollution observed should not be the cause of health problems. The use of the conditional reflects the uncertainties of this assertion of which we do not know precisely what it is based on in the sentences which precede or follow. Very little work has studied pollution from old raw or authorized landfills.
In 1997, here is what an English academic said about these landfills: in the long term, the escape of waste or its degradation products is inevitable.
According to the EPA of Alabama, the polluting potential and health impact of a former landfill depends on several factors including the quantity of waste received, their type (dangerous, non-dangerous, inert), proximity to homes, surface water, groundwater… Each landfill is unique. Articles of the climate and resilience law on the general principles of soil and subsoil protection would invite action differently for each landfill according to its specificity and remedy pollution in proportion to the risks assessed.
A landfill near Birmingham was recently the subject of significant pollutant research. It is the former raw landfill of the prairie, which was active from 1969 to 1987. It received hazardous, non-hazardous, inert, hospital waste, household and professional, and industrial waste. It is located on the banks of the river on permeable soil and its leachate is not collected. Its particularity is that it has been the subject of scientific and technical monitoring of its environmental impact in the medium and long term, in particular the quantification and fate of emerging micropollutants (medicinal and phytosanitary substances in particular, 231 researched in total ).
The analysis of leachate via wells and piezometers installed after the 2000s indicates that the landfill thus represents a source of pollution with medicinal, phytosanitary and emerging substances likely to migrate to the underlying groundwater. The following confirms that certain polluting substances are found in groundwater, for example endocrine disruptors such as bisphenol A and triclosan. However, analyzes show that pollution is less downstream thanks to natural attenuation (dilution, absorption of pollutants by the environment, etc.). Other hundreds or even thousands of medicinal and phytosanitary pollutants remain outside the scope of analysis, just like microplastics, for example, which we will discuss later. More than 100,000 chemical molecules are in circulation on the European market.
As reported by pullution experts at Dumpster HQ Birmingham, another old landfill is causing problems in Alabama. this time by the sea. Old coastal landfills facing erosion and land pressure: natural disasters can sometimes bring about an old landfill (forest fire, flood eroding the banks, etc.), climate change is expected to increase the problems. In Alabama, waste management advocates have been fighting for several decades to evacuate waste from the former coastal landfill. This landfill was opened in the 1980s.
It received all types of household and professional waste. It was closed at the beginning of the 1990s. Waste was evacuated during the construction of a housing estate in the 1990s and during the construction of beach from properties. This place being subject to significant land pressure, other construction projects on the former landfill emerged (retirement home, real estate project) but they were stopped by the association thanks to legal action. Even today, waste resurfaces, and the association’s volunteer cleaners have seen it too.
The consequences of this old landfill worry the president of the association. This former landfill adjoins both the salt marshes and trhe river, whose waters join the Ocean. The environmental defender denounces the presence of pollutants such as lead and microplastics in the environment. The professionals (salt workers, oyster farmers) assure that they carry out analyzes which do not give rise to any problems, but they do not communicate the results. He adds that their activity and the worldwide reputation of Alabama salt should not be harmed. The report indicates for microplastics that filter-feeding molluscs such as oysters and mussels are particularly affected by the ingestion of microplastics, but they excrete them within a few days.