Assessment of Changes in the Quality of Groundwaterin the Region of the Municipal Landfill in Wojkowice

Abstract

Aim of the study. Landfilling is an activity, which may threaten the destruction or contamination of the soil and water environment. Pollution can be generated both by leachate and by landfill gas. Legal conditions impose on landfill managers to monitor groundwater around the landfills. The impacted soils and groundwater show high chlorides, sulphates, heavy metal concentrations especially as compared to natural hydrochemical background values. Monitoring results can be analyzed using pollution indicators. The objective of this study was to determine the quality of groundwater in a landfill in Wojkowice (southern Poland) using the Backman index. Material and methods. The novelty of the paper results from the use of a different range of parameters than initially included in the formula. The results of water quality monitoring for three piezometers from 2013–2020 were considered. The contamination index was calculated separately for each of the analysed water samples, taking into account the electrolytic conductivity and the concentration of total organic carbon (TOC), Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu, Cr and the sum of N-NO3, N-NO2 and N-NH4. Results and conclusions. The Backman index values range in the groundwater samples were –5.3 to 603. The value of the Backman index increases with the increase in the concentration of individual parameters in groundwater. In the case of heavily transformed areas, the water pollution index has high values, exceeding 3. The results of this index indicated that the quality of the groundwater around the landfill is bad. In the future, it is planned to expand the range of parameters for calculating the index.

The Lipówka Landfills: A Case Study in Groundwater Quality Assessment

“…One of the solutions that could apply here is to consider the average value for individual parameters from the piezometer, which is located at the inflow of groundwater to the landfill area and is not affected by any landfill (Karkocha, 2021). Unfortunately, for this landfill it is difficult to identify such a piezometer because municipal waste landfills are adjacent to other groundwater-affecting facilities.…”

“…Some of the parameters that Horton used (pH, electrical conductivity, temperature, turbidity, total solids, dissolved oxygen, coliforms, biochemical oxygen demand, alkalinity, chloride, total phosphate and nitrate) are further applied to calculate other indicators, such as the heavy metal pollution index, Backman index, heavy metal evaluation index, seasonal quality index, landfill water pollution index (LWPI) or Nemerow index (Nemerow, 1974;Backman et al, 1998;Prasad and Bose, 2001;Tsegaye et al, 2006;Talalaj and Biedka, 2016;Rezaei et al, 2017;Kumar et al, 2019). The possibility of using any parameters, and at the same time having freedom in the selection of weights for the parameters and hydrochemical background in some indicators (Singh et al, 2017;Gorzelak and Dąbrowska, 2021;Karkocha, 2021), admittedly may result in the lack of universal application of such methods.…”

Application of selected groundwater quality indices in anthropogenically transformed areas

“…In the article by Karkocha (2021), the main aim of the research was to precisely determine groundwater quality in the landfill in Wojkowice (southern Poland). In this context, the Backman Index was used to provide a comprehensive assessment of the state of the aquatic environment.…”