With 1.754.099 inhabitants, the municipality of Belém produces roughly 1,200 tons per day of all kinds of waste, which are deposited in a landfill known as Lixão do Aurá, bordering the municipality of Ananindeua. During the past 11 years, this area has been accumulating approximately three million and two-hundred thousand tons of solid waste, transforming that place into a permanent local source of anthropogenic pollution, altering environmental conditions and resources around the whole area surrounding it. A Vertical Electrical Resistivity Sounding (VERS) procedure, conducted in the area before it was transformed into the landfill (1991), compared with the measures taken eight years later (1998), show that the land resistance has considerably dropped, with values in some cases — 109 times smaller than the original ones, thus indicating that the layers have been affected by the leach from waste decay. Fifteen profiles were conducted in the area, using the electrical imaging system, allowing us to confirm the (VERS) results, with evidences that the underground water has been affected by the infiltration and by the leachate vertical and horizontal movements. The hydro geological characteristics in the area show that the local predominant type of aquifer is of the free kind, locally confined, with hydraulic gradient of approximately 0.695%, effective porosity of 28%, permeability coefficient ranging from 1.1 x 10-3 to 0.9 x 10-4 cm/s, and underground flows running north/south towards the Guamá River, at approximately 14.79 m/year. A multivariate statistical analysis has shown that superficial water samples, collected simultaneously at three control points, during one tide cycle, regardless of the season, portray totaily different behaviors, indicating that superficial water resources are being affected by the superficial movement of leachate. With the concentration value figures for each of the leachate parameters (pH, conductivity, alkalinity, ammonia, total organic carbon, chloride, sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesia), plus the flow of the Aurá River at the control point near the Guamá River, it is possible to estimate the quantity of pollutants that the solid waste landfill sends into the water system. During one tide cycle, in the dry season, the solid waste landfill deposits approximately 13,115 kg of chloride, 417 kg of ammonia, and 129,767 kg of salts in the local water system. For the underground waters, the multivariate statistics showed that the samples collected In the monitoring wells in the area show significant differences, indicating that the wells located downstream have been affected by the leachate. The presence of sand layers right in the area where solid waste is deposited allows for the vertical and horizontal movement of the different pollutants originated by the leachate. The heavy metais anaiyses, conducted under the sequential extraction methodology, showed percentages in the geochemical phases potentially bio-available in the studied soil and sediment samples. In the soil samples, the potentially bio-available fraction (replace, reduce, and organic geochemistry phases) contained an average of 32% of the total Cadmium (Cd), 11.8% of the total Chromium (Cr), 23% of the total Copper (Cu), 12.32% of the total Nickel (Ni), 43.1% of the total Lead (Pb), and 31.01% of the total Zinc. The potentially bio-available phases percentage in the sediments of the area was greater than the ones found in the soil samples. In these sediments, the quantity of heavy metais in the potentially bio-available fraction, shown higher values during the dry season than during the rainy season; for instance, 33% of the total Cd measured during the rainy season increased to 37% in the dry season; Pb increased from 61 to 70%; Zn, from 51 to 54%, among others. The metais analyzed by total attack in the soil samples, compared with the sandstone backgrounds, indicate that the Fe (3.1%), Cu (18.5 ppm), Ni (10.1 ppm), Pb (69.5 ppm), Cr (76 ppm), and Cd (>1 ppm) are above normal standards. In the case of sediment samples, the EPA background values (total concentration) would be moderately polluted by Cr (average 64.6 ppm) and heavily polluted by Fe (3.8%) and Mn (600 ppm). These results show that the sediments were not polluted by Pb and Zn. Considering the potentially bio-available phase and using the tool provided by a Geographic Information System (GIS), we can say that, during the rainy season, the sediment samples were not polluted by Cr (potentially bio-available fraction smaller than 20% of the total) were highly polluted by Pb and Zn (PBD higher than 50%), and moderately polluted by Cu, Ni, and Cd (PBD between 20 and 50%).
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