Legacy wastes in the coastal zone: Environmental risks and management futures

从历史上看，家庭和工业废料的处置往往很少考虑到潜在的环境影响。废物通常被堆放在垃圾填埋场，这可能会向周围环境释放潜在的污染物。这种“遗留垃圾填埋场”在沿海地区尤其令人担忧，因为随着气候变化，这些地区可能会受到越来越多的洪水、更严重的侵蚀和更极端的干湿循环的影响。管理这些环境问题至关重要，但目前我们没有一个系统的框架来评估和了解沿海地区不同类型废物所构成风险的性质。鉴于英国丰富的工业历史，在河口和沿海地区有各种遗留废物，如城市废物、矿山废物、钢铁工业副产品、冶炼和化学过程废物中富含金属的废物。该提案汇集了一组专门评估遗留废物环境风险的研究人员，以：(1)提供与沿海地区遗留垃圾填埋场相关的环境风险的国家评估；(2)为现在和未来有效管理这些风险提供框架。该项目的第一部分将汇集各种国家数据库（例如关于垃圾填埋场的位置、采矿废物、海岸侵蚀率、海岸管理计划），以提供沿海地区遗留垃圾填埋场的单一基于地图的数据库。然后，我们将与政府机构和学术界的区域专家联系，整理记录在案的风险细节，并确定高风险优先地点（例如，污染风险最大和/或受侵蚀或洪水影响最严重的地点）。这可让我们概览海岸堆填区的不同废物种类，评估它们所构成的广泛风险（例如污染物排放、物理侵蚀等），并考虑从这些地点回收资源的可能选择（例如可循环再造的废金属）。该项目的第二个组成部分将提高我们对沿海环境中不同类型废物的环境行为的理解。对废物进行的大多数风险评估都假定它们将与淡水接触（例如，模拟废物与降雨接触的浸出试验）。我们将通过测试不同类型的废物（如城市废物、矿山废物、加工废物）在一系列环境条件下如何释放污染物，在评估沿海环境风险方面取得重大进展。这些条件将模拟当前和未来沿海地区的环境情景，如盐度变化和气候变化预期的极端干湿变化。至关重要的是，我们将进行实验，测试这些废物在一系列实验尺度上的表现（例如，从烧杯大小的实验，到跳跃大小的实验，再到实际地点的测量）。重要的是要相信，小规模的实验室实验为我们提供了关于污染物如何从废物中释放的信息，这些信息与实际现场的数据相匹配。这些资料对于扩大在项目第一部分中完成的风险评估是至关重要的。遗留废物的有效长期管理依赖于许多不同机构的共同努力（例如，理事会、监管机构、土地所有者、工程师）。因此，项目的最后一部分将把英国不同地区的各种利益相关者聚集在一起，以(1)评估修复方法，(2)考虑项目早期阶段提出的管理优先事项。将在联合王国的不同行政部门举办一系列讲习班，以制定沿海地区遗留废物的国家管理框架。

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.