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

历史上对来自家庭和工业来源的废物的处置往往很少考虑到潜在的环境影响。废物往往被填埋，可能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，因为随着我们的气候变化，它们可能受到洪水增加、侵蚀加剧和更极端的干湿循环的影响。管理这些环境问题至关重要，但目前我们还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，有广泛的遗留废物沉积在河口和沿海地区，如城市废物，矿山废物，钢铁工业副产品，冶炼和化学工艺废物产生的富含金属的废物。该提案汇集了一个专门评估遗留废物环境风险的研究人员团队，以（1）提供沿海地区遗留垃圾填埋场相关环境风险的国家评估，以及（2）为现在和未来有效管理这些风险提供框架。（例如，关于填埋场位置、采矿废物、海岸侵蚀率、海岸管理计划），以提供沿海地区遗留填埋场的单一地图数据库。然后，我们将与政府机构和学术界的区域专家联络，以整理记录风险的详细信息，并确定高风险优先地点（例如污染风险最大的地点和/或受侵蚀或洪水影响最严重的地点）。这将使我们能够概述沿海垃圾填埋场的不同类型的废物，评估它们构成的广泛风险（例如污染物释放，物理侵蚀等）。，并考虑从这些地点回收资源的可行方案（例如可循环再造的废金属）。项目的第二部分将加深我们对不同废物种类在沿岸环境中的环境行为的了解。大多数废物风险评估都是在假定废物将与淡水接触的情况下进行的（例如，模拟废物与降雨接触的沥滤试验）。我们将通过测试在一系列环境条件下不同废物类型（例如城市废物、矿山废物、加工废物）如何释放污染物，在评估沿海环境的环境风险方面取得重大进展。这些条件将模拟沿海地区当前和未来的环境情景，例如随着气候变化而预期的盐度变化和极端的湿润和干燥。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规模上的表现（例如，从烧杯大小的实验，通过跳跃大小的实验，到在真实的地点进行测量）。小规模的实验室实验能够为我们提供与真实的现场数据相匹配的废物中污染物释放的信息，这一点很重要。这些信息对于扩大项目第一部分完成的风险评估至关重要。对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，议会、监管机构、土地所有者、工程师）。因此，项目的最后部分将使联合王国不同地区的利益攸关方聚集在一起，（1）评估补救办法，（2）审议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.