Elena Aguirre (SADECO, Spain) presented the “Geophysical prospection (ERT) for the detection of accumulation of leachate in a municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill”.
These studies were undertaken at the “Los Ruices” MSW landfill in Malaga. This is actually a combination of two landfills, where the new sanitary landfill is built above the sealing of a previous non-sanitary landfill. The landfill is located at a natural depression.
As the landfill is built upon another landfill there was a risk of instability, and the need for acquiring data about the landfill without affecting the mass. Therefor a non-invasive geophysical technique was chosen: Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) is a geophysical technique for imaging sub-surface structures from electrical resistivity measurements made at the surface of the landfill.
The ERT profile allowed to have an idea on the accumulation of leachate in the landfill, additional pumps were installed to ensure the excess leachate water was not causing any instability. With a cost of less than 10 000 euro , useful information was received.
The measurements were repeated after 6 years and indicated there was a leakage in the impermeable layer which required a new intervention.
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