Sunday, August 23, 2009

Crumbling coastline threatens landfill spills

Sam Bond in Edie.net: Coastal rubbish tips that long since covered over and abandoned could cause a fresh headache as erosion threatens to open them up and wash the waste into the sea. Predicted impacts of climate change resulting in changing weather patterns and sea level rise put an ever-increasing pressure on the UK coastline to support flood and erosion management.

This possible increased level of coastal erosion places risk of wash-out of potential hazardous waste from former industrial and domestic landfill sites situated along the coastline in the UK. Research and information broker CIRIA is now planning to develop guidance for those responsible for managing these time-bombs.

"Completed landfill sites may have had very little monitoring undertaken to assess the potential for pollution incidents, so very little may be known about their likely risk to the environment or human health," said a statement from CIRIA….

Beach erosion caused by Hurricane Noel in 2007, at Boynton Beach, Florida, on the city beach. Shot by Versageek, Wikimedia Commons, the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0, Attribution ShareAlike 2.5, Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 and Attribution ShareAlike 1.0 License.

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