Greek landfills are plagued by problems
Despite being in operation for three years at the most, sanitary landfills are plagued by problems, with garbage being dumped in places that lack both permits and planning, liquid runoffs and gas emissions left unmanaged, and neither ground nor surface water checked for possible contamination, says a report by the Ministry of Planning and Public Works. This is true not only of ordinary dumps but of official, organized landfill sites which were supposed to provide a solution to the problem of garbage. Thirty-three landfills are in operation today, while four more are under construction and three are up for tender, which is major progress, given that only 15 existed in 1999. Uncontrolled When the Ministry of Planning and Public Works (YPEHODE) sent out a questionnaire for an overall survey of landfill sites, half of the 18 bodies who received it required a whole year (and innumerable phone calls) to reply to it. The answers were devastating. Sixty-one percent of landfills did not even have a prefectural permit to operate, while 52.9 percent were not part of any integrated scheme for the management of solid waste. Even more significant were the problems in the actual operation of landfills. Forty percent did not weigh the garbage they received, while 72 percent did not carry out a systematic analysis of the composition of the waste. In many cases, garbage was not checked for hazardous waste. These are not merely technical problems as the exact amount and composition of waste must be known for the the site to be restored to nature after it has been filled. Furthermore, uncontrolled dumping can slow down or halt the necessary process of decomposition, and even produce hazardous chemicals such as hydrogen cyanide, thus delaying restoration of the environment. Also deficient is the monitoring of liquid runoffs from landfill sites, while one third of landfill sites do not even lay out their methods for treating liquid runoffs. The requisite checks on ground and surface water in the areas around landfills, so that measures can be taken in case of leaks, are skimped on by some authorities. According to YPEHODE, 55.5 percent of sanitary landfills state that they either do not carry out checks or they do not give out data. Only two out of 18 landfills carry out checks on nearby surface water. Even the Ano Liosia site in Attica is plagued by problems. Landfill officials admitted on the questionnaire that the weighing system did not work, neither did the system for collecting and processing liquid runoffs nor the one for gas emissions. The compression machines had problems; checks on vehicles entering the site were inadequate; sections of the boundary fence had been destroyed, and the floodwater drainage ditch was blocked with matter. The biggest landfill site in the country has equally big problems. Causes Researchers stress that 30 percent of the problems were due to a lack of preparation, 20 percent to construction errors and 50 percent to improper use. Construction errors, according to the Hellenic Solid Waste Association’s (EEDSA) permanent working group on landfills, included problematic excavations and unstable proofing materials, difficulties in the construction of artificial geological barriers, defective joints and shafts in pipes to collect liquid runoffs, and problems in pipes carrying off gas emissions. These defects may cost as much in economic terms as they do in environmental ones. It is well known, for example, that during the construction of the Rethymnon landfill, heavy machinery moved over the waterproof surface ( a mere 1 millimeter thick), destroying it in places which later resulted in liquid runoff being detected in the sea.
