Netherlands' landfills for sludge rapidly filling up
The PFAS pollution in Dutch ports and rivers is so great that landfills for contaminated sludge are filling up much faster than expected, according to research by Trouw. Rijkswaterstaat warned that building new underwater landfills could easily take ten years.
The Netherlands introduced stricter standards for PFAS, chemical substances that are harmful to humans and the environment, in 2019. Since then, twice as much sludge has been entering the two Rijkswaterstaat landfills in the Ketelmeer on the Maasvlakte and in the Hollandsch Diep. Last year, 1.7 million cubic meters of sludge were dumped into these landfills - about 85,000 truckloads.
The Rijkswaterstaat set up the dredging landfills around the turn of the century, with the expectation that they would provide sufficient capacity to dump contaminated sludge for at least 50 years. However, according to Trouw, the water engineering depots estimate that they will be full in 10 to 15 years.
The landfills aren’t filling up only because of stricter PFAS rules. It is also due to the permanent supply of PFAS in the rivers. For example, Germany recently refused to stop its industrial companies from discharging PFAS into the Rhine River before it runs into the Netherlands. Infrastructure Minister Barry Madlener plans to discuss this with the German government.
“The situation with PFAS in our river system is serious. It is everywhere,” Pieter de Boer, a dredging expert at Rijkswaterstaat, told the newspaper. “We now have to think about what we intend to do when the landfills are full. Stopping dredging is not an option.” Dredging is essential for keeping the rivers navigable and to achieve the nature objectives for water quality, he stressed.
