UK and Europe’s hidden landfills at risk of leaking toxic waste into water supplies | Landfill

Thousands of landfills in the UK and Europe are in flood plains, posing a potential threat to drinking water and conservation areas if toxic waste is released into rivers, soils and ecosystems, it can be revealed.

The findings are the result of the first continent-wide mapping of landfills, carried out by the Guardian, Watershed Investigations and Investigate Europe.

Patrick Byrne, from Liverpool John Moores University, said: “With the increasing frequency and scale of flooding and erosion due to climate change, the risk of this waste flowing into our environment is increasing.

“This includes physical waste such as plastics and construction materials, but also metals and toxic chemicals such as Pfas. [‘forever chemicals’] and PCB [polychlorinated biphenyls].”

Kate Spencer, professor of environmental geochemistry at Queen Mary University, said: “We have identified a huge range of waste at an eroding coastal landfill. [in Tilbury] including what looks like hospital blood bags, and we’re talking about tens of thousands of sites that, if unprotected and at risk of flooding, there are multiple ways for blood to enter groundwater, surface water and the food chain.

It is estimated that there are up to 500,000 landfills in the European Union. Around 90% of these, including 22,000 sites in the UK, predate pollution control regulations such as landfill linings to prevent leaching. Well-managed modern landfills are likely to be low risk.

More than 61,000 landfills have been identified across Europe, 28% of which are located in areas vulnerable to flooding. Modeling indicates that the actual number of sites at risk of flooding could be as high as 140,000. This mapping effort, based on requests for landfill data from 10 countries and supplemented by open source information, highlights a deeper problem: European institutions lack centralized landfill registers, while data from different member states remains fragmented, inconsistent and often inaccessible.

“We have inadequate records, differences in how we categorize these sites, which makes it really difficult to manage,” Spencer said.

“This is the worst possible scenario. Most landfills will work fine, but it only takes a small number of sites with very toxic chemicals to be a problem. We just don’t know which ones.”

More than half of mapped landfills are in areas where groundwater does not meet chemical quality standards, suggesting that landfills may, in some cases, have contributed to contamination.

The EU Landfill Directive, adopted in 1999, banned unlined landfills and created strict waste acceptance criteria. But before that, there were few or no measures to combat pollution.

“There could be many other sources of pollution, such as agriculture and industry, but one of the main routes that chemicals move away from landfills is through groundwater,” Byrne said.

Byrne discovered leachate leaking from the historic landfill at Newgate Nature Reserve in Wilmslow, Cheshire, into a small stream. Its tests found toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” at levels 20 times higher than acceptable levels for drinking water. In Greece, tests found Pfas levels several times above drinking water standards, as well as mercury and cadmium seeping into the Nedontas River from the ancient Maratholaka landfill in the Taygetos mountains, visited each year by thousands of hikers. The local mayor of Kalamata claims that the site has stopped operating since June 2023 and that “there is currently no evidence or data to justify any environmental impact linked to the operation of the site”.

Some of these waters could be sources of drinking water and analyzes revealed almost 10,000 discharges into drinking water zones in France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. More than 4,000 of these are historic landfills in England and Wales and are therefore unlikely to have pollution controls. It could not be confirmed whether landfills in Europe predated the regulation or not.

“We won’t and won’t know what the risk is to human health and our drinking water until we can identify where all the landfills are, what’s in them, whether they’re leaching and whether treatment processes are filtering them,” Byrne said.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said that “under the Drinking Water Directive, the quality of tap water must be guaranteed throughout the EU. The directive includes several parameters to be monitored and the corresponding limit values ​​must be respected. If these limit values ​​are exceeded, member states must ensure that the necessary corrective measures are taken.”

In the UK, water companies undertake risk assessments and monitoring of their public water catchments in accordance with regulatory guidance.

Landfills most at risk of exposure are those located along the coast. The analysis found 335 landfills in areas of coastal erosion in England, Wales and France, and 258 landfills across Europe within 200 meters of the coast, which could be at risk of erosion or exposure to storm surge.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said Spencer, who is helping the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) rank the most high-risk landfills among 1,200 priority sites identified across England and Wales. She tested two eroded landfills on the coast and found that Lynemouth, to the northeast, was releasing high concentrations of arsenic, and Lyme Regis, to the southwest, was releasing high levels of lead, both of which could cause ecological damage.

“We now need to understand the potential risks of climate change and associated pollution emissions at all of our historic landfills, not just coastal ones,” she said, adding that funds will be needed to tackle these sites.

“Essentially we all live in a landfill,” said Spencer, who explained that around 80% of the UK population lives within 2km of known landfills, and disproportionately in the most deprived areas of the country.

A report by the UK Health Safety Agency concluded last year that living near a well-managed active or closed municipal landfill does not pose a significant risk to human health, although the situation at historic sites is less clear due to a lack of data.

Wildlife may also be at risk, as more than 2,000 European landfills are in protected conservation areas.

“We know that plastics are accumulating in wildlife, humans and the environment, and new evidence of negative health impacts is emerging,” Byrne said.

“A key part of chemical pollution is where the chemical leachate goes. We have significant wetlands around these areas, so if the leachate gets there it could accumulate in wildlife.”

Illegal waste dumping is also a significant problem, which Europol has identified as one of the fastest growing areas of organized crime in Europe. In February, Croatian authorities arrested 13 people suspected of illegally dumping at least 35,000 tonnes of waste from Italy, Slovenia and Germany into Croatia, generating a profit of at least 4 million euros for the criminals.

In England, Environment Agency data shows 137 investigations into illegal dumping, involving more than a million cubic meters of material.

In the Campania region of southern Italy, illegal dumping of toxic waste by the mafia has been blamed for increasing mortality and morbidity rates in the region.

In England and Wales, at the current rate of use, our remaining landfill capacity could run out around 2050. New sites often face environmental concerns and public opposition.

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “Our job is to protect people and the environment, and we work closely with the landfill industry, water companies and across government to better understand the impacts of Pfas chemicals in landfill.

“Environment Agency teams are undertaking a multi-year program to improve evidence on the sources of Pfas pollution in England. At the same time, we are also carrying out further studies to investigate the potential contribution of Pfas to landfill leachate from a limited number of sewage treatment plants.”

A Defra spokesperson said: “We want to prevent waste from happening in the first place, but where waste does occur we must manage it in the most appropriate way.

“We are committed to reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill, through our collection and packaging reforms. Meanwhile, the next Circular Economy Growth Plan will set out measures to drive greater reuse and recycling, preserving the value of our resources and keeping the country’s waste out of landfill.”

• Disclaimer: This dataset may contain duplicate records. Duplicates can arise from multiple data sources, repeated entries, or variations in data collection processes. Although efforts have been made to identify and reduce duplication, some records may remain.

• Journalismfund.eu provided financial support for the investigation.