Environmental Impact of a Garbage Dump in an Estuary

Abstract

Former garbage dumps and clandestine garbage dumps are an environmental problem. The main goal of this work is to present how the lack of an adequate management allowed the location of a dump on the floodplain of the Bahía Blanca estuary (Province of Buenos Aires, Argentine Republic), putting it at risk. For this, the area, the chronological evolution of the former landfill from its beginnings to its current situation as a coastal seafront, and the parallel with the evolution of environmental legislation is described. An evaluation of the results detected in estuary water is done at the stations nearby the former landfill in order to confirm whether the detected dissolved metals originate in their leachates. As a support tool, a geographic information system is used to show the spatial and temporal evolution of the former landfill, which has an area of more than 50 ha shaped like a peninsula, surrounded by a sector that appears at low tide, with muddy consistency and at high tide is covered with water. In addition, it allows us to visualize clandestine overturns even though the landfill was closed in 1992. The conclusion is that the absence of appropriate legislation, planning, and compliance of the development plans, as well as the lack of continuity of all of these and the need to adopt immediate solutions, led to the location of the former landfill that compromises the sustainability of the estuary.