Impacts on Ground Water Quality Due to Open Dumping of Municipal Solid Waste

摘要

One of the major problems many cities face today is the 'Management of Municipal Solid wastes' arising out of domestic, commercial and industrial activities. Due to the increase in disposable packaging of consumer products and explosion of industrial growth, local authorities, though committed, are unable to cope with their disposal. The unscientific management of the waste leads to serious environmental hazard. Considering the enormous quantities of waste generated by domestic and industrial societies and the very limited possibilities for disposal of this waste to surface media, particularly in view of the need to control the pollution of air and surface water, the subsurface must continue to serve as receptor of vast and probably increasing quantities of waste. Leakage of inorganic and organic pollutants from unlined landfills over time can influence the groundwater quality and may pose a threat to drinking water resources. In addition to the leachate generation, the decomposition of waste creates gases such as methane and carbon dioxide. These gases will slowly migrate into the air around the landfill and impairs air quality in the immediate vicinity and on a large scale; it may contribute to the effect of green house and global wanning.rnChennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu is the commercial and business hub for South India. The estimated MSW generation in Chennai city is about 3400 MTs. The city is served by two dumping yards namely Kodungaiyur and Perungudi, both incidentally located on wetland areas. The Chennai Corporation consists of 10 zones. The corporation dumps approximately 1400 MTs of MSW in Kodungaiyur dumping ground, which is collected from zone 1 to zone 5. Another 1,800 tonnes of garbage, including that cleared by the private operator CES Onyx in three (6, 8 & 10) of the 10 city zones, reaches the 250-acre dumping ground in Perungudi. This paper reports the results of the water quality study that was conducted for assessing the environmental impacts due to leachate migration from open dumping site. The results of the analysis of the ground water samples show that the water quality parameters are above the permissible limits for standard drinking water.