Contaminación de suelos y aguas subterraneas por vertidos industriales

Abstract

In the industrialised countries, soil and groundwater contamination caused by uncontrolled spills of industrial wastes is one of the most critical environmental problem, because its removal is expensive and difficult to carry out, and the effects persist during many years. In Spain this problem is especially notorious due to an inadequate management policy derived from the absence of coordination between the different involved sectors. The treatment installations are inot enough, so it has produced spillings in streams and soils or its storage in uncontrolled landfillings.

The experiences and guidelines of the Environmental Protection Agency from United States have served to the industrialised countries to evaluate this kind of contamination. This methodology is based on its identification and delimitation in soil and groundwater. After the design of a monitoring and control program it can be established the correcting measures. For this reason it is important to know the transfer processes of pollutants between the saturated and not saturated medium, for this reason it is essential the use of geochemical and geophysical methods and their combination with hydrogeological methods.

In Spain, this kind of studies is only carried out recently. A case history is the contamination of the alluvial aquifer of the Besos river (Barcelona) by Cr-VI and other heavy metals and organic microcontaminants.