On Monday, we had a guest speaker, Stedano Milia, come and talk to our class about Remediation of Contaminated Sites. His objective is to eliminate risks for human health and the environment by either removing the containments or controlling the containments. He also talked about sources of contamination being from natural catastrophes, anthropic activities, and from agricultural activities. After he talked to us about contaminated sites, he then had us do several problems to determine thicknesses of the wall, hydraulic permeability, and other various factors to contain the contaminated areas.
Later that day, we had time to work on our second project. My group worked for a few hours, and then went to the Botanical garden in Sardinia! It featured several plants that grow commonly in Sardinia.
The first picture depicts one of the pretty cactus plant, and the other picture shows me and Divya in front of one of the waterfalls in the Botanical garden.
There were other pretty fountains, and some funky looking plants!
Right next to the Botanical garden is an old Roman Amphitheater. Unfortunately, we did not go in, but some of the tunnels and caves from this amphitheater are in the Botanical garden. We thought those caves might be were the lions were hidden for the gladiators to fight, but the sign told us the caves were actually waterholes. However, they were dark and scary, and we didn't like going in them!
The next day we went sailing in the morning. I found this really cool and interesting, as I had never sailed before. Our instructors taught us the basic ways to sail, and some of the terminology associated with a sail boat. However, there was not that much wind that day, so we didn't go to quickly. At one point, we went to go swimming, and Ted, our human anchor, had to leap on a sharp rock to anchor, and fell in and cut his back! However, the water was fun to swim in, despite the fact that I am a little freaked out about swimming in open water were I can't see the bottom very clearly.
For the rest of the day, we hung out at the beach. The water was almost like being in a pool--clear, no waves, and pretty shallow. When I got out of the water, I accidentally feel asleep on the beach and burned the whole front of my body! (In horrible patchy blotches, as some of the sunscreen hadn't come off yet). However, the beach still really fun to relax on.
Today, we went to Villaservice, which is an anaerobic digest/landfill/sewage plant. The landfill was created in 1993, which is when they started their first landfill. This landfill was capped, and now the second landfill is in use, and is almost full. They are now starting to prepare land for the third landfill. The first landfill extracts biogas, which Villaservice started doing in 2009. They expect to be capturing biogas until 2039. They will also be collecting biogas in their second landfill when it is closed. However, they believe there will be a lot less biogas because Italy passed a law that makes households separate their organic fraction. The separate organic fraction is used mostly to make compost, but is also used for anaerobic digestion.
This shows the garbage being compacted. This garbage is placed in a special area of the landfill, and is expected to be extracted sometime in the future. Villaservice wants to eventually build a incinerator, so they will extract this compacted garbage to use as fuel.
Villaservice also has a wind and solar farm. They are looking to put new solar panels on their landfills when they are capped for additional energy.
After the landfill, we went to a hiking trail in Villacidro. There was a beautiful waterfall and river, which we hiked along. A part of the hike included some intense rock climbing! The hike was quite steep, but the views were amazing and the river was beautiful. One of the regazzis had to jump into the water, of course.
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