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Iraq highly depends on its surface water resources. Now it is facing water shortage problems. For these reasons, the utilization of groundwater will be increasing with time. Karbala Governorate is located in the central part of Iraq. It covers an area of 5034 km 2 and the population exceeds one million. It is characterized by an arid or semiarid environment. Karbala Governorate lack surface water resource and consequently, groundwater is the only available resource. The main groundwater aquifer within the area is Dibdibba formation. It is composed of poorly sorted sand and sand stone with gravel. In this research hydrological and hydrogeological information were used to find out the magnitude and the direction of groundwater seepage velocity. The results indicate that groundwater flow toward the flood plain to the east of the study region. The seepage velocity ranges from 0 to 0.18 m/d, with a general increase when moving from the west to the east.

The mining industry produces massive amounts of waste that in contact with oxygen can result in leaching of metals. Access to a suitable cover-material for the mine waste is sometimes limited, creating a driving force for recycling industrial residues for these purposes. Green liquor dregs (GLD), an industrial residue from paper and pulp production, has the potential to be used in a sealing layer as an amendment to till. Though hydraulic conductivity is commonly used to evaluate the quality of the sealing layer, field application from laboratory investigations is challenging as many factors, apart from vast variations in the physical properties of both the till and the GLD, control hydraulic conductivity. In this study, 5–20 wt.% of GLD from two different paper mills, with different total solid contents and particle size distributions, were mixed with a silty till with varying total solid contents to investigate how the materials’ dry density, initial water content, and compaction affects the hydraulic conductivity. We found that the initial water content of the materials was the most important factor. With a drier till and GLD, more GLD should be added to attain the lowest hydraulic conductivity possible. The compaction was not found to notably affect the mixtures’ hydraulic conductivity.