Legacy Wastes in the Coastal Zone: Environmental Risks and Management Futures

沿海地区的遗留废物：环境风险和管理未来

• 批准号: NE/T003200/1
• 负责人: Bryan Spears
• 金额: $ 12.12万
• 依托单位: UK CENTRE FOR ECOLOGY & HYDROLOGY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FT003200%2F1
• 关键词: Legacy; Wastes; Coastal; Zone; Environmental

Historical disposal of wastes from domestic and industrial sources often took place with little regard for potential environmental impacts. Wastes were often deposited in landfills that can release potential pollutants to the surrounding environment. Such 'legacy landfill' sites are a particular concern in coastal areas where they are likely to be affected by increased flooding, greater erosion and more extreme cycles of wetting and drying as our climate changes. Managing such environmental issues is of critical importance, but currently we do not have a systematic framework by which we assess and understand the nature of the risks posed by different waste types in coastal areas. Given the UK's rich industrial past, there are a wide range of legacy wastes deposited in estuarine and coastal settings such as municipal waste, mine wastes, steel industry by-products, metal-rich wastes from smelting and chemical process wastes. This proposal brings together a team of researchers specialising in assessing the environmental risks of legacy wastes to (1) provide a national assessment of the environmental risks associated with legacy landfills in the coastal zone, and (2) provide a framework for effective management of these risks now and in the future.The first part of the project will bring together various national databases (e.g. on location of landfills, mining waste, coastal erosion rates, coastal management plans) to provide a single map-based database of legacy landfills within the coastal zone. We will then liaise with regional specialists in government agencies and academia to collate detail on documented risks and identify high risk priority sites (e.g. those with the greatest contamination risk and / or those most affected by erosion or flooding). This will allow us to produce an overview of the different types of waste in coastal landfills, assess the broad risks posed by them (e.g. pollutant release, physical erosion etc.) and consider potential options for resource recovery from these sites (e.g. scrap metals that could be recycled).The second component of the project will improve our understanding of the environmental behaviour of different waste types in coastal settings. Most risk assessments for wastes are undertaken assuming they will be in contact with freshwater (e.g. leaching tests that simulate wastes in contact with rainfall). We will provide a significant advance on assessing environmental risks in coastal settings by testing how pollutants are released from different waste types (e.g. municipal waste, mine waste, processing wastes) under a range of environmental conditions. These conditions will simulate the current and future environmental scenarios in coastal areas such as variations in salinity and extremes of wetting and drying that are anticipated with climate change. Crucially, we will undertake experiments that test how these wastes behave across a range of experimental scales (e.g. from beaker sized experiments, through skip-sized experiments, to measurements at real sites). This is important to have confidence that small scale laboratory experiments give us information on how pollutants are released from waste that matches with data from real field sites. Such information is crucial for extending the risk assessments completed in part one of the project. Effective long term management of legacy wastes relies on many different agencies working together (e.g. councils, regulators, land owners, engineers). The final part of the project will therefore bring various stakeholders together in different parts of the UK to (1) evaluate approaches to remediation, and (2) consider management priorities put forward by the early stages of the project. A series workshops will take place in the different administrations of the UK to produce a national management framework for legacy wastes in the coastal zone.

经常发生的国内和工业来源废物的历史处置，对潜在的环境影响很少。废物通常被沉积在垃圾填埋场中，这些垃圾填埋场可以将潜在污染物释放到周围环境中。在沿海地区，这种“遗产垃圾填埋场”地点是一个特别关注的地方，因为它们可能会受到随着气候变化而受到洪水增加，更大的侵蚀和更极端润湿和干燥周期的影响。管理此类环境问题至关重要，但是目前，我们没有系统的框架，通过该框架，我们可以评估和理解沿海地区不同废物类型所带来的风险的性质。鉴于英国富裕的工业过去，在河口和沿海环境中存放着广泛的遗产废物，例如市政废物，矿山废物，钢铁工业副产品，来自冶炼和化学工艺废物的金属富含金属废物。该提案汇集了一群研究人员，专门评估遗产废物的环境风险（1）对沿海地区的遗产垃圾填埋场的环境风险进行全国评估，（2）为这些框架提供了有效管理这些风险的框架。现在和将来的风险。该项目的第一部分将汇集各种国家数据库（例如，在垃圾填埋场的位置，采矿废物，沿海侵蚀率，沿海管理计划），以提供一个基于地图的传统垃圾数据库沿海地区。然后，我们将与政府机构和学术界的区域专家联络，以整理有关有记录的风险的细节并确定高风险优先地点（例如，那些污染风险最大的人和 /或受侵蚀或洪水影响最大的人）。这将使我们能够概述沿海垃圾填埋场中不同类型的废物，评估它们带来的广泛风险（例如，污染物释放，物理侵蚀等），并考虑从这些地点恢复资源的潜在选择（例如，刮擦金属，这些垃圾金属是这些地点可以回收利用）。项目的第二部分将提高我们对沿海环境中不同废物类型的环境行为的理解。假设它们将与淡水接触（例如，模拟与降雨接触的废物的浸出测试），则进行了大多数风险评估。我们将通过测试如何在一系列环境条件下测试不同废物类型（例如，市政废物，矿山废物，加工废物）如何释放污染物的方式来评估沿海环境中的环境风险的重大进步。这些条件将模拟沿海地区的当前和未来环境方案，例如随着气候变化而预期的盐度变化以及润湿和干燥的极端。至关重要的是，我们将进行实验，以测试这些废物在一系列实验量表上的表现（例如，从烧杯大小的实验到跳过大小实验到在真实位点的测量）。重要的是要确信，小型实验室实验为我们提供有关如何与来自真实现场站点的数据相匹配的废物中释放污染物的信息。此类信息对于扩大项目第一部分中完成的风险评估至关重要。有效的遗产废物长期管理依赖于许多不同的机构（例如议会，监管机构，土地所有者，工程师）。因此，该项目的最后一部分将使英国不同地区的各个利益相关者聚集到（1）评估补救方法，（2）考虑该项目早期阶段提出的管理优先级。将在英国的不同政府举行一系列研讨会，以在沿海地区为旧废物制定国家管理框架。

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• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.167371
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