Indexing method for assessment of pollution potential of leachate from non-engineered landfill sites and its effect on ground water quality

Abstract

Dumping of solid waste in a non-engineered landfill site often leads to contamination of ground water due to leachate percolation into ground water. The present paper assesses the pollution potential of leachate generated from three non-engineered landfill sites located in the Tricity region (one each in cities of Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula) of Northern India and its possible effects of contamination of groundwater. Analysis of physico-chemical properties of leachate from all the three landfill sites and the surrounding groundwater samples from five different downwind distances from each of the landfill sites were collected and tested to determine the leachate pollution index (LPI) and the water quality index (WQI). The Leachate Pollution Index values of 26.1, 27 and 27.8 respectively for landfill sites of Chandigarh (CHD), Mohali (MOH) and Panchkula (PKL) cities showed that the leachate generated are contaminated. The average pH values of the leachate samples over the sampling period (9.2 for CHD, 8.97 for MOH and 8.9 for PKL) show an alkaline nature indicating that all the three landfill sites could be classified as mature to old stage. The WQI calculated over the different downwind distances from the contamination sites showed that the quality of the groundwater improved with an increase in the downwind distance. Principal component analysis (PCA) carried out established major components mainly from natural and anthropogenic sources with cumulative variance of 88% for Chandigarh, 87.1% for Mohali and 87.8% for Panchkula. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) identifies three distinct cluster types for the groundwater samples. These clusters corresponds to a relatively low pollution, moderate pollution and high pollution regions. It is suggested that all the three non-engineered landfill sites be converted to engineered landfill sites to prevent groundwater contamination and also new sites be considered for construction of these engineered landfill sites as the present dumpsites are nearing the end of their lifespan capacity.

Effect of waste landfill site on surface and ground water drinking quality

“…Management of solid waste is a major challenge in several countries, especially in developing countries with high rate of population growth. In developing countries, mostly, solid wastes are dumped in engineered landfilled sites (Shaker and Yan, 2010) or nonengineered landfilled sites (Rana et al ., 2018; Sharma et al ., 2019). Landfills have been identified to have serious threat to the environment if not handled and operated appropriately (Talalaj and Biedka, 2016).…”

“…Exposure of ground water to leachate is further increased by excess rainwater (Nagarajan et al ., 2012). Leachate may contain organics, inorganic salts and heavy metals within it (Mojiri et al ., 2014; Rana et al ., 2018). These leachate constituents are mainly a function of the age of the landfill and the degree of waste stabilisation (Talalaj and Biedka, 2016).…”

“…The sources of odour such as leachate, landfill gases and deposited materials are a very significant issue of landfills (Maheshwari et al ., 2015; Rana et al ., 2018; Sharma et al ., 2019). The health and environmental threats resulting from landfills calls for proper management and operation.…”

“…The health and environmental threats resulting from landfills calls for proper management and operation. Hence, extensive studies have been conducted to investigate the health and environmental effects of waste landfill on humans and the environment (Cumar and Nagaraja, 2011; Singh et al ., 2016; Rana et al ., 2018; Sharma et al ., 2019). In their study, Rana et al .…”

Using advanced statistical tools to assess the impact of a small landfill site on the aquatic environment

“…The study of leachate from a landfill site used since the 1990s using statistical tools confirmed the interaction between leachate and underground and surface waters, as demonstrated in several studies (Przydatek 2019a ; Przydatek and Kanownik 2019 ; Vahabian et al 2019 ). According to Rana et al ( 2018 ), an applied multidimensional statistical analysis is used in environmental monitoring or dataset modelling to reduce dimensionality and deviation, which is helpful in data evaluation.…”