Land disposal of river and lagoon dredged sediments

The Jacarepaguل lagoon system, in the Western part of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with an area of 8 km2 receives the contributions of a number of rivers crossing largely populated and industrial areas without adequate sanitation and drainage. Since 1996 studies have been carried out to assist future dredging works and disposal of rivers and lagoons sediments. These studies included full characterization of these sediments and evaluation of the contamination of the dredged material with emphasis on the assessment of heavy metals. The present paper report these studies to assess a large dredging programme of about 3.8 million m3 of the river basins and 4 million m3 of lagoons sediments to be disposed inland.