Coastal Landfills, Rising Sea Levels and Shoreline Management: A Challenge for the 21st Century

Populated coastal areas worldwide have a major legacy of waste disposal and the coastal flood plain contains thousands of landfills in the UK alone. At the same time, we expect a significant rise in sea levels over the coming century: the only uncertainty is the magnitude of this rise. Hence, there is growing concern that historic landfill sites located near the coast could pose a significant risk to the environment as a result of coastal flooding and the release of solid waste by erosion. In England and Wales, the majority of landfill sites have been assigned a ‘Hold The Line’ Policy in Shoreline Management. However, there is no clear funding mechanism to deliver this policy. Equally, we lack protocols that allow the impact of different categories of waste release to the sea to be assessed in a consistent and evidence-based manner. This paper takes a UK perspective of this global issue. First it reviews the status of landfills in the coastal flood plain and erosion risk zones. This includes consideration of the issues that historic landfills located within a coastal setting raise for future shoreline management. It then focuses on three contrasting case study sites on the south coast of England. Building on these experiences, general lessons and the urgent need for further action on coastal waste and landfill are distilled. These include (1) the need for greater understanding of the amount, character and impact of waste that could be released from any landfill site, (2) the need to address regulation of waste eroding from coastal landfills, (3) significant gaps in information on erosion rates and impact of sea-level rise on future erosion at specific sites, and (4) the absence of funding sources to address problems at these sites.