The Malagrotta Landfill and its Effects on the Resilience of
its Local Communities
Source:https://ejatlas.org/conflict/the-‐malagrotta-‐landfill-‐and-‐speculation-‐in-‐the-‐galeria-‐valley-‐italy
Authors: Menke Groot Kormelink (10880402)
Frank Hopman (10192395) Alp Cakir ()
Meriç Kessaf (10615830)
Course: Interdisciplinary Project
Tutor: Koen van Der Gaast MSC
Expert Supervisor: Dr. Prof. Marc Davidson
Table of Content
Abstract ... 3
Introduction ... 4
Social and ecological resilience ... 5
Theoretical Framework ... 6
Soil and water contamination ... 6
Ecosystems, state shifts, ecosystem services and bioaccumulation ... 7
Threats for local communities ... 7
Decision making processes, exclusion and governance ... 8
Problem definition and complexity ... 9
Organisation of concepts ... 10
Methods ... 11
Results ... 13
The decision making process of the Malagrotta landfill ... 13
Soil analyses ... 13
The effects on its surrounding ecosystem ... 16
Health and deterioration of surrounding living-environment ... 19
Countermeasures against the Malagrotta landfill ... 20
Interdisciplinary conclusion and organisation of results ... 21
Conclusion ... 22 Discussion ... 23 References ... 24
Abstract
By the increase of urbanised area, also the amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) has increased in cities. A common way around the globe to treat this MSW is by putting it into landfills. It is known that landfills have a big influence on their direct environment and this research has looked how the Malagrotta landfill, which used to be the biggest landfill of Europe, has influenced the social resilience of the local communities surrounding the landfill. This will be done by using an interdisciplinary approach, integrating urban planning, earth sciences, biology and human geography. By organising the concepts of different disciplines and taking resilience as an uniform benchmark to analyse the effects on local communities (overarching concept), the different
disciplines will be integrated into one broader, interdisciplinary, perspective. The landfill turned out to have been ruled by an enterprise syndicate, hereby not representing the collective interest. This has allowed the landfill to pollute its environment without interception for a long time. It is found that the landfill leaked Cu, Zn, Cd, Sb, Pb, Cr, Ni, Cd, Sb, Ti and As, hereby contaminating the soil and very likely bioaccumulated and biomagnificated in the organisms surrounding the landfill. This has caused a decline in ecological resilience. However, no significant air pollution from the landfill has been found. The pollution of the landfill has caused a decline in quality of life in the local
communities by affecting the ecosystem services and the health of the people and has hereby declined the social resilience of the local communities. Eventually the landfill was shut down by the European Union by a lawsuit.
Key words: Malagrotta, landfill, landfill leachate, local communities, policy making, resilience
Introduction
Urbanisation in developing and developed countries is increasing every year (Güneralp and Seto, 2008). One of the major urbanisation challenges is to realise a good developed waste management system to cope with the increasing waste disposal. Municipal Solid Waste is known as everyday trash or garbage, it comes from homes, schools, hospitals and offices. Municipal solid waste
management (MSWM) is, if used correctly, a well-‐ engineered facility and appliance to challenge the waste problem. One of the methods of MSWM is the use of landfills. A municipal solid waste landfill is an area of land which purpose is to store the waste of households but also commercial solid waste
(Kjeldsen, Barlaz, Rooker, Baun, Ledin & Christensen, 2002). When landfills are used correctly, they are located, designed, operated and monitored correctly by approval of federal regulation.
Municipal solid waste landfills must be designed in such a way that the environment is protected from contaminants which are present in the solid waste stream (EPA, 2016). However, according to Reddy, Krishn and Rao (2015), 90% of all the MSW is not properly processed and disposed in open dumps and landfills (Reddy, Krishna and Rao, 2015). Landfills bring various problems to local communities such as the decline of well-‐being. For example, according to Elliot et al., (1996), communities close to a new landfill have higher reported levels of psychosocial effects, such as an increase in worrying and anxiety (Wakefield & Elliott, 2000; Elliot, et al., 1996). In Italy MSWM has been a problem for decades (Fagnano, Adamo, Zampella, & Fiorentino, 2011).
One of the biggest landfills of Europe is the landfill of Malagrotta (Barbieri, M., Sappa, G., Vitale, S., Parisse, B. and Battistel, M., 2014). This landfill covers an area of 160 hectares and receives MSW from Rome, Ciampino and Fiumicino (Barbieri et al., 2014). Before the landfill was closed in August 2013 it used to receive 1.3 million tons of MSW and 140 tons of sludge from municipal sewage plants per year. The landfill was closed due to an european lawsuit regarding the lack of waste treatment.
No interdisciplinary research has been done regarding the processes concerning Europe’s largest landfill and its effect on its surrounding environment. This approach might result into new theories and insights about unsustainable landfills. Therefore this paper aims to make a first analytical step in this process with the following research question: ‘How has the landfill of Malagrotta influenced the resilience of its local communities?’
This research will unite four disciplines, urban planning, human geography, earth science and biology, into one interdisciplinary perspective. Earth sciences will analyse the accumulation of the trace metals draining from the landfill. Biology will investigate the state of the ecosystem. Urban planning will analyse the internal and external influences on the decision making process concerning the landfill. Human geography will analyse the physical and mental problems the people of the local communities experience. Combining the various disciplines are necessary to obtain a complete understanding of the research question and the term resilience, because this topic can not be covered by one discipline or a multidisciplinary approach. For illustration, a gamma perspective is more likely to focus on human processes and social effects on local communities. While a beta perspective would probably emphasize the natural processes and effects concerning local
communities. Furthermore, these perspectives be divided in various focus points per discipline. A multidisciplinary perspective is not sufficient because all focus points of various disciplines are continuously influencing each other, which will be presented in the organisation of concepts. This interdependency of focus points forces to analyse the landfill and its effect with an interdisciplinary perspective (Boulton & Allen, 2007). In the section ‘problem definition and complexity’ the
complexity and interdisciplinary approach will further be elaborated.
First the term ‘resilience’ will be introduced and divided into ecological and social resilience. This is the first integration method which is used in this research and is presented before the theoretical framework, because in this framework it is further elaborated on per discipline. This method of term extension will make it possible for all disciplines to use the same benchmark while analysing the effects of the landfill on its local communities. This is necessary because different disciplines have a different definition of ‘resilience’. Then a theoretical framework is presented with a presentation of key concepts per discipline. Thereafter the problem definition is declared along with its complexity. Then the second integration method will be presented to realise a common ground for an
interdisciplinary approach. All theoretical concepts will be organised into one organisation of concepts. This method makes it able to obtain a view of all the relevant concepts regarding the research question and to comprehend the interlinkages between the concepts and disciplines. The organisation of concepts will also be used as a blueprint for the data analysis. In the following sections the used methods will be elaborated and the results will be analysed. In the last part the concluding remarks and discussion of the research will be stated.
Social and ecological resilience
In this paper the concept resilience is used to obtain a better understanding of the relation between the ecosystem and the local communities of the Malagrotta landfill. The resilience of a system is determined by two factors. The first factor is the amount the system moves away from its
equilibrium at a certain amount of perturbation, while the second factor is the time it takes from the system to restore to its global equilibrium. When a certain threshold is passed, the system can no longer restore itself to its original state without external restoration efforts and will shift into a different state. In this paper resilience is divided into two types of resilience; social resilience and ecological resilience. Both types of resilience are integrated in the analysis of the four disciplines and will be used to clarify the relation between the social and ecological sciences. Ecological resilience indicates how much stress an ecosystem can handle before it shifts to a different, usually undesirable, state (Scheffer, Carpenter, Foley, Folke & Brian, 2001), while social resilience indicates the degree in which a community can cope with external stresses resulted of social, political and environmental change (Adger, 2000). The ecological resilience in our case concerns the resilience of the ecosystem surrounding the Malagrotta landfill, while the social resilience concerns the resilience of the local communities surrounding the landfill. The resilience of the community will be used to determine the social resilience. The decision making process determines the characteristics of the landfill and thus its influence on social and ecological resilience.
A relation between these types of resilience have been suggested by Adger (2000) due to the dependency of local communities on the ecosystem services provided by the ecosystem. When for example there is an increase in fire frequency, the fire will not only influence the ecosystem itself, but this will also influence the local community depending on lumber production. If therefore an ecosystem shifts from a system with a low fire frequency to a state with a high fire frequency, also the social resilience is influenced. The Malagrotta landfill influenced its local ecosystem resilience in various ways and has therefore also influenced the social resilience of the local communities, as will be elaborated on later.
By integrating social and ecological resilience in the research he relation between ecological and social resilience becomes clear, a more holistic approach is acquired and the relation between different perspectives of the disciplines gets clarified.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework is used to present the effects on the landfills throughout different
disciplines. Describing the theoretical framework within the different disciplines will eventually show their working structure and their deficiencies in the subject, which will eventually lead to the
inevitable need of conjunction with the other disciplines. This will be described in the ‘problem definition’ further in the paper.
Soil and water contamination
The working structure for the earth science discipline is mainly based on the subject to make a clearer overview of the quality of the soil, thus, by analysing the contaminations that are
accumulated on-‐ or in the local soil or to follow the flow path of the contaminations (Critto, Carlon & Marcomini, 2003). Analysing the soil on its quality is the foundation for nearly all land uses. The soil quality is a reflection of the capacity to preserve and promote plant and animal productivity and health and it enhances the water and air quality (Herrick and Wander, 1998).
By investigating the contaminations that are coming from the landfill a link could be made with the source, that is the landfill in Malagrotta and the effects it had on its soil, contaminated Malagrotta area, and on other environmental matrices (Critto, Carlon & Marcomini, 2003). The local area that will be investigated has to be delimited by (hypothetical) borders. Thus, not too much information will be derived and only the effects on the local area will be taken into account (Barbieri et al., 2014). The environmental matrices will consist of the soil and the aquifers systems. Aquifer system, in this research, will consist of overland water, groundwater, flow lines and the discharge area. This system can be seen as a transport mechanism of the contaminated chemicals that will be flowing through the soil (Critto, Zuppi, Carlon, & Marcomini, 2004). Data that will be extracted about the soil from similar earlier research will have to contain information about the amount of the contaminated chemicals present in the soil. For example, if we look at the aquifer system, it is known that water deriving from rain, percolating into landfill, will carry a high chloride level (Critto, Carlon &
Marcomini, 2003). When it is known what sort of soil type is present at the landfill location, and with more information about the flow system, it is possible to understand which chemicals will be likely to accumulate at a certain area or which will flow further with the percolating water. This
information can be derived from knowledge about soil science. The soil resilience can be defined as the capacity of a soil to recover entirely, functional and structural, after a disturbance (Seybold, Herrick & Brejda, 1999.; Herrick and Wander, 1998). Soil resilience can also be defined as the capacity of the soil to resist changes after a disturbance (Seybold, Herrick & Brejda, 1999). In this case, and in both definition, the disturbance is the contamination from the landfill.
A map and table will provide data about the location and concentration of the contaminated chemicals of the Malagrotta area. Further research about the exposure of these chemicals on
ecosystems and individuals, and to make another link with the effects on its local community, makes the other disciplines necessary. As for the earth scientist it is not clear how the changes in the soil will affect its local ecosystem and eventually the individuals living in the local communities. The first linkage step with the biology discipline is needed, that will show the effect of the changes on the ecosystems.
Ecosystems, state shifts, ecosystem services and bioaccumulation
An ecosystem is a community of all organisms, their physical and biological environment and the interactions between these organisms and their environment (Alcamo et al. 2003). The benefits humans gain from ecosystems are called ecosystem services. The ecosystem services influence directly or indirectly human well-‐being by influencing security, basic material for good life, health and good social relations. Biodiversity seems to be a key factor influencing the richness of the ecosystem services of an ecosystem (Mace, Norris, & Fitter, 2012). Ecosystems can be in different stable states, called global equilibriums (Scheffer, Carpenter, Foley, Folke & Brian, 2001). The amount the ecosystem’s state moves away from its global equilibrium and its time to recover after the perturbation is gone to this equilibrium is called the ecosystem’s resilience. Ecosystems can also move into another stable state by changing its conditions. There are three different manners an ecosystem can react on these sorts of changes, of which one in which the system can experience a catastrophic shift is the most dangerous one, since if this kind of shift occurs it is very hard to shift back to its original state. The phenomenon of taking more condition change to shift back than to shift forward is called hysteresis. Landfills are known to leak heavy metals (Kjeldsen et al., 2002). These heavy metals get bioaccumulated into its surrounding environment. Bioaccumulation is the accumulation of chemicals in organisms (De Vries, Groenenberg, Lofts, Tipping and Posch, 2013). These chemicals do not only poison the initial consumer of the chemicals, but these chemicals also end up in higher trophic levels by the consumption of lower trophic levels, this is called
biomagnification. In this manner the concentration of chemicals become higher with each level it travels. By leakage of chemicals and the bioaccumulation of these chemicals can the ecosystem around the landfill be damaged and potentially shift into a different state. The critical load is the highest total input rate of a pollutant below which no negative effect has been observed (CLRTAP, 2015). By comparing the critical load with the current input one can assess the damage of the current pollution. This method takes a change in future concentration into account and is therefore a relative good predictor for future risk.
Threats for local communities
Most landfills are placed at the edges of big cities because it is not an option to locate them within the cities because of their detrimental influence on its surroundings (Lo, 1996). However, the fact that transport and time is expensive ensures they locate the landfills not at a great distance from the cities. This means that the landfills are placed nearby the local communities who are living around the big cities and this communities are directly affected by the landfills. A study about the risks of congenital anomalies of landfills indicates that residence within 3 km of a landfill is associated with a significant risk of congenital anomalies. The difference of the risks between different landfills was minimal (Dolk, et al., 1998). This risk is a consequence of the chemical contamination of air, water or soil which the local communities are exposed to. This contamination can also affect the local food
production. To assess these influences the Environmental Impact Assessment is developed, which takes a certain project into account and reveals the impacts it has on the basis of a particular framework (Davoli, et al., 2010). However, these outcomes are only successful when used by developers, which is most often not the case. This is why there is a lot of activism from citizens. This is a bottom up approach and this activity is called the grassroots health movement or health
movement. They try to raise attention for local health problems and they want to influence federal policies (Gibbs, 2002). In spite of this growing movement against hazardous activities including landfills, local communities still face the difficulties of the landfills in their quality of life.
In reality it is difficult to find evidence for the particular influence of an toxic chemical on the human body. The damaging of the human body by these chemicals is a slow process. This is due to the slow bioaccumulation of chemical toxins in the soil, as only large quantities are hazardous. This is also the reason why it is often decided to choose an already polluted community, as this makes it much more difficult to trace back health problems with a specific toxin (Armiero & Fava, 2016).
It will cost a lot of effort to accomplish a sustainable or at least a nonhazardous landfill which is not putting pressure on the local communities who are located nearby the landfill. This has several reasons. First of all is the influence of the local communities is small. Second of all are policies not strong enough to accomplish a transformation in landfills and in waste disposal in general, and on top of that is it very hard to find evidence which leads to exact point of supply of the different toxins found in the soil. Additionally, developers want to have the most low-‐cost option for a landfill so they will not consider a location other than close to the cities, so strict policies will be crucial.
The threats for local communities affect the social resilience and especially the community resilience, which is part of the social resilience. Community resilience is quite similar to social resilience, since they both concern the ability of a group to adapt to a social, political or
environmental change (Cutter, Barnes, Berry, Burton, Evans, Tate and Webb, 2008). Communities have geographical boundaries and consist of different factors such as natural, economic, social and environmental factors. Community resilience is used for measuring the resilience of communities facing changes mostly caused by hazards or disasters which therefore is useful in assessing the impact of the effects of a landfill on a local community. Indicators of community resilience are the population wellness, quality of life and emotional health. These indicators will be assessed through the rates of mental illness and their stress level and the satisfaction of their livelihood. The
community resilience measures to what extent the local communities have to adapt to the new situation and if they can maintain their livelihood.
Decision making processes, exclusion and governance
This part aims to present to concepts of power structures, stakeholder exclusion and governance structures. How people manages its waste disposal is dependent on the stakeholders and their power relations. Waste and its effects can not be autonomously taken care by the market or non-‐ commercial interest groups because the interest of people outside the decision making process can easily be excluded and it would be attractive to do nothing or free load on someone else waste management efforts (Renn, Webler, Kastenholz, 1996; Heylighen, 1995; Rabe, 1990). Because the collective issue of waste management concerns many people and interests the government has to take responsibility and properly manage its citizens waste disposal (Rohtstein, 2008). The power relations of the government can be top down, bottom up or manifestate in a hybrid form. Most importantly, the power relations within the governmental form determines the decision making
process and the potential degree of exclusion (Silva, 2015). A government where the power is on a high scale has a high chance to exclude local stakeholders. Exclusion of local and environmental stakeholders result in the neglection of the desires of these groups. In the case of the Malagrotta landfill it would imply a high chance of negatively influencing the resilience of local communities.
Most literature studies on landfill problems and protests emphasize the lack of social and environmental inclusion (e.g. Paliotto et al., 2014; Ferreira, & Gallagher, 2010; Renn, Webler, & Kastenholz, 1996; Zhan et al., 2013; Mitchell, & Carson, 1986). When stakeholders are excluded they can try to pressure the decision making process externally through various countermeasures. Protests, media activism or other actions against governmental decisions often take place within a governance structure (e.g. Leonard, & Pelling, 2010; Wong, 2016; Hui, & Au, 2016). Governance differs from government because it is a form of collective decision-‐making in settings where a plurality of actors and organisations are present where no formal control system can impose the terms of relationship and power structures between stakeholders. These forms of actions are meant to externally pressure or to be included in the decision making process to stand up for their interests (Chotray & Stoker, 2009; Wong, 2016). In this case this would imply that governance actions are not only in relation with exclusion of stakeholders but also with the desire to restore or improve the local resilience.
Problem definition and complexity
The growing population, prosperity and urbanisation in different developing and developed countries brings a major challenge, the treatment of the rising waste in these cities (Cherubini, Bargigli & Ulgiati, 2009; Güneralp and Seto, 2008). Landfilling is a frequently used method to solve this problem. The origins of the Malagrotta landfill is to meet up with the ascending waste disposal from the surrounding cities like Rome (Michelozzi et al., 1998). The Malagrotta landfill has been the object of concern since it has been operating in the 1960s. From the beginning the concern lies on the inefficient waste treatment and the environmental contamination, which are potentially
affecting local communities (Michelozzi et al., 1998). Since 1970 the landfill received 1.3 million tons of MSW per year, with a yearly increasing amount, while the recognition of landfill leachate impact on the environment has forced the authorities rigorously to sharpen the pollution control
requirements (Barbirie et al., 2014; Renou et al., 2008). The landfill was eventually closed in 2013, because of the decision of the european court (Ejatlas, 2015).
Even though the landfill is closed, it is still relevant to look at how the Malagrotta landfill has influenced it local communities, because it can be an example for other landfills. Few articles gave quantitative information about the effects it had on the local communities and no interdisciplinary research has been conducted yet concerning this landfill (Guerrero, Maas & Hogland, 2013). Therefore this paper will answer the research question ‘How has the landfill of Malagrotta influenced the social resilience of its surrounding local communities?’.
The differences and possible contradiction between the disciplines will be presented before the elaboration of the complexity of the case. All differences and possible contradictions are related with each other The first point is that the disciplines analysed the effects of the landfill from distinctive viewpoints. Beta disciplines tend to focus more on social resilience while gamma
disciplines gravitate more toward social resilience. Searching for effects from distinctive viewpoints can result into incoherent data analysis and different approaches to understand the case. Secondly in the theoretical framework it appeared that every discipline used other concepts to analyse the case. The concepts might have different methods to measure and analyse which can result in
contradicting results. Lastly, every discipline accentuates different causalities Urban planning focusses on the causality between the decision making process and resilience. Biology emphasizes on the causality between the landfill and ecosystems. Earth science targets the effects of landfill on the soil. Human resilience puts local communities at the centre and analyses the external effects of the landfill. Every discipline is supplementary with each other and critically enhances the reliability of the stated effects regardless of these differences and possible contradicting.
This case can be seen as a ‘complex problem’ from two approaches. First, there are many aspects of the landfill which are connected with each other. As an example, the decision making process influences the natural processes of the landfill. Secondly, the ecological and social effects of the landfill are nonlinear. To tackle this complex problem, the four disciplines need to be integrated with each other and an interdisciplinary perspective is required. To do this, two methods are used. The first method is called term extension. The presented terms resilience will be used as a uniform benchmark to measure the influence of the landfill. To cope with difference between natural and social effects resilience is subdivided in social and ecological resilience. Both terms are affecting each other (Adger, 2000). The second method is through organising the different concepts into a visual chart. Through an organisation of concepts the connectivity between the different concepts and a overview will be achieved. The organisation of concepts will also be used as a blueprint for the results. Since the term resilience has been discussed earlier in this paper, the next section will elaborate on the organisation of concepts.
Organisation of concepts
All theoretical concepts have been elaborated per discipline. It’s clear that every discipline has a different approach in the theoretical framework to answer the research question. To unify the different concepts from the disciplines the organisation of concepts is used. This bridges the gap between the different disciplines. The aim of the organisation of concepts is to form one holistic scope to analyse the case. The connections through the concepts of the different disciplines show the complexity of the effects of the landfill on the local communities which is used to provide an overview of this phenomenon. This will be analysed in the case study the landfill of Malagrotta. The presented organisation of concepts below integrates every presented concept regarding the direct and indirect relation between the landfill and the local communities.
The government, with its power structures and stakeholders, make the decision about the
realization and characteristics of the landfill (Rohtstein, 2008; Silva, 2015). Landfills tend to leach and contaminate the soil and the aquifer systems (Renou, Givaudan, Poulain, Dirassouyan & Moulin, 2008). Besides, the aquifer system and the soil characteristics are influencing each other in extent through leaching. By accumulating chemicals in the soil, plants will bioaccumulate these chemicals, hereby harming organism and negatively influencing the biodiversity (De Vries, Groenenberg, Lofts, Tipping and Posch, 2013). A decline in biodiversity decreases the ecosystem resilience (Fischer, Lindenmayer & Manning, 2006), which decreases the state of the ecosystem. The decline of the ecosystem state around the local communities, influenced by the biodiversity, can cause a change in their ecosystem services (Mace, Norris, & Fitter, 2012). The changes of the ecosystem services are mostly negative and cause health problems, degradation of their environment and agriculture. The neglection, degradation and exclusion of local and environmental stakeholders result into political countermeasures which have to be in the form of governance. Through protest, research and political interaction the governance structures try to influence the government and decision making process, while the stakeholders in charge try to maintain power (Ejatlas, 2015).
By using the organisations of concepts as a blueprint for the results the connections between the effect the landfill has on its local communities become visible from an interdisciplinary perspective. By organising the results in a similar fashion, a more holistic comprehension of the effects of the landfill can be understood and moreover will be clearly visualised.
Methods
To analyse the ecological impact of landfill of Malagrotta several scientific papers will be used concerning the Malagrotta landfill, but since there hasn’t been much research been done at the specific site, several other published researches will be used which have researched other comparable landfills.
To measure bioaccumulation several studies will be used of similar landfills in Italy concerning the bioaccumulation of chemicals of Lichen, while the effects on the soils and eventually the ecosystem services will be measured by using papers which assess the effect of similar landfills on the water, air and food quality.
The earth science discipline will derive information from actual fieldworks that have been done beforehand at the Malagrotta landfill. Their findings will be analysed and used in the results.
Urban planning will first present a brief macro analysis of decision making structure in Italy through a literature study. Secondly the initiation of the landfill with its maintaining process and the
participating stakeholders will be analysed through governmental and grey documents. Through a language barrier the access to governmental documents is very difficult. Therefore international and national newspapers will be consulted. This should make it possible to understand the powerful stakeholders and exclusive effects of the landfill. Thirdly the effects of governance structures and actions together with governmental countermeasures concerning the landfill will be put into relation with the decision making process.
To find the data for human geography, the relevant theories about the effects on the local
communities living around a landfill in the literature will be discussed. Different landfill cases will be used to analyse our case Malagrotta. The resilience of the landfill Malagrotta would be analysed through divide this concept and per discipline the resilience will be analysed to made a statement about the resilience as a whole. Also the links between the other disciplines will be made to examine the different processes with their consequences and causes. Without using the other disciplines the common resilience of the landfill Malagrotta can not be assessed as they are interlinked and the resilience can not be interpreted in separated events within the different disciplines.
Results
The decision making process of the Malagrotta landfill
Italy’s power structure is defined as a regionalised unitary state which implies that the regions have a high degree of responsibility and autonomy which is constitutionally guaranteed (Silva, 2015). To take responsibility of the sanitary waste of its region the province of Rome decided in 1977 to realise a landfill in the industrial area Malagrotta. With the aim to adequately dispose, treat and recover the sanitary waste of its region, share collective responsibility and to prevent freeloaders. The government procured the management of the landfill to the company CO.LA.RI. From the first moment on the landfill violated EU laws and national legislations (Environmental Justice Atlas, 2015).
Various meta-‐analysis regarding landfills in Italy find a high degree of corruption which results to cost inefficiency and violation of rules. Unfortunately, enterprise syndicates seem to be relatively common in Italian landfills which implies that illegal networks and criminal organisations can have a crucial influence on the management and development of Malagrotta (Abrate et al., 2015). The exact degree of corruption is difficult to underline because of the unknown networks. Although there are various points which seem to sufficiently prove the corruption of Malagrotta. First of all, the efficiency of the landfill is so subordinated and the pollution is so severe that the landfill is infringing national and european laws (Environmental Justice Atlas, 2015). This also implies that the desire to maintain a sustainable environment and the desires of international, national and local stakeholders have been excluded in the decision making process. Secondly, various lawsuits were and still are submitted against the enterprise syndicate which dominated the decision making process since the initiation of the landfill. The most powerful and responsible stakeholders in the decisionmaking process are likely to be involved in the enterprise syndicate (Trocchia, 2014; Legambiente, 2017; Roe, 2014). This degree of corruption has resulted in the lack of transparency, responsibility and inclusiveness in the decision making process even though the project was initiated by the public sector. And has resulted in an ineffective and unsustainable landfill which has been harming the social and ecological resilience from the beginning.
During the first decades of the Malagrotta landfill the responsible and most powerful stakeholders seem to try to secure the absolute power, purely follow their own monetary ideals and exclude other stakeholders. -‐ This has resulted in the degradation of the environment and local health, governance countermeasures and national and international lawsuits, which will be elaborated in the upcoming part.
Soil analyses
First the local area will be delimited. The case study is chosen to be the Malagrotta landfill, located nearby Rome, Italy. Because this paper will focus on already derived information from earlier field work and no actual field work is planned for this paper, two scientific papers are used that did fieldwork on the Malagrotta landfill, Barbieri et al., (2014) and Critto, Carlon & Marcomini (2003). The area that Barbieri et al., (2014) used for their field work will be analysed. That is also why the delimited area that this paper used for their research will also be used for this paper.
Figure 2 shows the Via Malagrotta and the distance it has to the other cities (Dipartimento di Architettura e Progetto, 2015)
Figure 3 show a more close up view of the Malagrotta area, with the land features visible (Dipartimento di Architettura e Progetto, 2015)
Figure 4 show the fieldwork area of Barbieri et al., (2014), and their ‘administrative boundary’ that delimits the area and the dots stand for the drilling area (Barbieri et al., 2014)
The earth science discipline has its focus on the trace metals. Trace metals in soils have two primary sources; natural sources and anthropogenic sources. According to Olowoyo et al., (2013), the increase of trace metals in the urban centre poses a serious threat to the quality of life. From diffuse or localised sources the soil accumulates the contaminants continuously. Olowoyo et al., (2013) asserts that the heavy metals will accumulate in the topsoil from atmospheric deposition, impaction and interception. Because of the ability of the trace metals to remain in the soil for an extended period it will pose a serious health and environmental problem (Olowoyo et al., 2013). Later in this paper the environmental impact of metal accumulation will be discussed.
The top layer of the soil is most likely to be affected by anthropogenic source than the natural source, this is according to the principal component analysis (PCA) (Yang et al., 2011). However, to
get an overall clear view of the sources, both top-‐ and bottom soil should be analysed. The Barbieri et al., (2014), research has taken, throughout the delimited area, 26 soil samples of which 13 are from the topsoil (0-‐30 cm) and 13 from the bottom soil (90-‐100 cm). Their results from the statistical analysis suggest that Cu, Zn, Cd, Sb, Pb, Cr, Ni and As are a result from the anthropogenic source. The remaining elements, TI, Rb and V are suspected to come from parent rock, which is a natural source (Barbieri et al., 2014). This also shown in their table:
Table 1 (Barbieri et al., 2014)
Table 1. Shows that the lithosphere and soil background are used as two criterions to see the changes occurring in the Malagrotta landfill. The trace metals Ni, Cr and As could be traced back to oil refinery located close to the landfill.
The aquifer system, explained in the theoretical framework, that should be used for the environmental matrices could have been a separate part of the results. However Barbieri et al., (2014), by analysing their results, already took this into account for their results, which makes their results more trustworthy and another analysis of the aquifer system unnecessary.
As stated in the theoretical framework the soil resilience can be defined as the capacity, throughout a disturbance, to continue functioning without changing; the changes are resisted. According to Seybold, Herrick & Brejda (1999), the extension of decline in the functioning capacity of the soil defines the degree of resistance to change. This means that a small decline means a high resistance and a large decline a low resistance (Seybold, Herrick & Brejda, 1999). The decline of functional capacity in this paper are interpreted as the changes in the ‘Malagrotta bottomsoil’ compared to the ‘Lithosphere’ criterion Pais and Benton Jones, 1997, shown in the table 1. Table 2. shows the mean values and the expected low or high resistance in resilience.
Chemicals V Cr Fe Ni Cu Zn As RB Cd Sb Ti Pb
Lithosphere Mean 2.32 2.28 1.60 1.73 0.929 3.1 134 2.64 4.20 25.0 5.87 14.3
Malagrotta
bottomsoil Mean 1.11 1.19 1.19 1.15 0.988 1.2 1.2 1.09 0.91 1.20 0.846 0.814 Resilience Resistance High High High High High Low Low High Low Low Low Low
Table 2. shows low and high expected resistance
Because it is clear that the soil is affected by the landfill of malagrotta, the soil quality can become a function of the soil resistance (Barbieri et al., 2014; Seybold, Herrick & Brejda, 1999). This is also the reason why the resistance criterion is made with ‘high’ or ‘low’ indication. The values of Zn, As, Cd, Sb, Ti and Pb show a low resistance in resilience which means that the soil quality is impacted by the landfill of malagrotta and a leachate of these chemicals is expected as also stated by Barbieri et al., (2014). This suggests that the ecological resilience of the ecosystem is decreased by the leakage of the earlier mentioned chemicals.
The effects on its surrounding ecosystem
Protano, Guidotti, Owczarek, Fantozzi, Blasi, Vitali, (2014) analysed the air pollution from the Malagrotta landfill by researching how this bioaccumulated in its surrounding environment. They specifically looked at the bioaccumulation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and several heavy metals, namely; arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn). To do this they looked at the bioaccumulation in epiphytic lichen Pseudevernia
furfuracea. P. furfuracea is epiphytic, which means that it grows on other organisms and is known for its ability to bioaccumulate PAHs and heavy metals (Guidotti et al., 2009). This bioaccumulation happens by taking up particles from the atmosphere. No difference was found between sites near the landfill in comparison with sites away from the landfill. However, there was an increase of these chemicals found in these plants 4 months later compared to when the study started. This was also the case in the control and is therefore most likely due to other sources of PAHs and heavy metals, like car emission gasses . This study indicates that there is bioaccumulation by uptake of heavy metals and PAHs from the atmosphere, but this is not caused by the landfill. Since lichen is
considered a hyperaccumulator, it is not likely that there are more sensitive plants near the landfill which bioaccumulate any heavy metals or PAHs through the air.
Table 3 Adapted from olycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and metals in transplanted Lichen (Pseudovernia furfuracea) at sites adjacent to a solid-waste landfill in central Italy. by Protano, C., Guidotti, M.,
Owczarek, M., Fantozzi, L., Blasi, G., & Vitali, M. (2014). P Archives of environmental contamination and toxicology, 66(4), 471-481.
Sánchez-‐Chardi, Peñarroja-‐Matutano, Ribeiro, and Nadal (2007) investigated in a similar landfill, the landfill of Garraf in Spain, how leakage of heavy metals of a landfill can bioaccumulate in small animals. They measured this by capturing 52 Apodemus sylvaticus, also known as the wood mouse, in Sherman traps. 24 mice came from a reference site, while 28 came from the site polluted by the landfill. They measured Cd, Fe, Zn, Cu, Mn, Mo, and Cr concentration in the liver and in the kidneys of the mice. The results are shown in graph 1.
Graph 1 Heavy metals found in liver and kidneys of mice at the reference site and at the landfill of Garraff. Adapted from Bioaccumulation of metals and effects of a landfill in small mammals. Part II. The wood mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus by Sánchez-‐Chardi, A., Peñarroja-‐Matutano, C., Ribeiro, C. A. O., & Nadal, J. (2007).. Chemosphere, 70(1), 101-‐109.
The authors concluded that the mice near the landfill contain higher concentrations of Cd, Fe, Zn, Cu, Mn, Mo, and Cr than wood mice from the reference site. Previous studies has at least indicated that heightened Cd concentration in the liver has a toxic effect on small animals (Ma & Talmage, 2001). It is likely that the other heavy metals also have negative effects on the mammals, but this has not been shown yet. The Malagrotta landfill has also leached Cd, Zn and Cu, just as the Garraf landfill. Since small mammals like the A. sylvaticus are found everywhere in nature it is likely that similar animals around the Malagrotta landfill also bioaccumulate the heavy metals leached by the landfill. These small mammals get consumed by predators and hereby the heavy metals biomagnificate up the food chain, affecting also the higher trophic levels of the ecosystem.
As mentioned before, the Malagrotta landfill used to leak Cu, Zn, Cd, Sb, Pb, Cr, Ni and As (Barbieri, Sappa, Vitale, Parisse, & Battistel, 2014). It has been shown that plants in different degree take this metals from the soil by their roots. Part of them they will use themselves. But when a soil contains concentrations as high as in Malagrotta, the heavy metals will bioaccumulate in the cell wall (Prasad, 2013). Plants are eaten by herbivores and the bioaccumulated chemicals will be transferred from the plant to the herbivore.
There is a river about 200 meters away from the edge of the Malagrotta landfill. Research at different similar landfills has shown that rivers near landfills get negatively influenced by the landfill leachate. Baker (2005) has found in a similar landfill that landfill leaching decreases dissolved oxygen, increases ammonia concentration, increased total organic carbon concentration in the adject river. A low dissolved oxygen level and high ammonia concentration correlates with ‘dead
