Ground water Contamination Due to Solid Waste Disposal: A Solute Transport Model Based on Perungudi Dumpyard, Chennai, I
Rapid industrialization and urbanization are the hall-marks of open economy. However, these developments commonly result in unplanned growth of cities and industrial hubs that deliver enormous quantities of solid and other wastes. Disposal of solid wastes
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Ground water Contamination Due to Solid Waste Disposal: A Solute Transport Model Based on Perungudi Dumpyard, Chennai, India P. Vasanthi, R. Srinivasaraghavan, and P. Prasad
Abstract Rapid industrialization and urbanization are the hall-marks of open economy. However, these developments commonly result in unplanned growth of cities and industrial hubs that deliver enormous quantities of solid and other wastes. Disposal of solid wastes in the outskirts and all available sites has been observed to be a major problem associated with unplanned growth of cities. Areas near such disposal sites are therefore prone to groundwater contamination due to leachate emerging from the site. The risk of groundwater contamination due to waste disposal can be assessed either by the experimental determination of the impurities or by estimation through solute transport modeling. Solute transport modeling is a powerful tool to study the dynamic response of an aquifer against quantitative and qualitative changes in the aquifer system. This chapter describes the assessment of the level of groundwater contamination around a solid waste disposal site in Chennai, India. A GIS integrated three dimensional model was generated using FEFLOW to simulate the contaminant concentration around the solid waste disposal site. From the model, the future spatial and temporal distribution of contaminants around the waste disposal site is predicted.
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Introduction
More than 90 % of urban solid waste, industrial solid waste and sludges in India are being dumped on land without adopting sanitary land filling practices. Precipitation that infiltrates the solid wastes disposed on land mixes with the liquids already trapped in the crevices of the waste and leach compounds from the solid waste. The leachate thus formed contains innumerable organic and inorganic compounds, accumulates at the bottom of the landfill, and percolates through the soil. When
P. Vasanthi (*) • R. Srinivasaraghavan • P. Prasad B.S. Abdur Rahman University, Vandalur, Chennai 600 048, India e-mail: [email protected] Mu. Ramkumar (ed.), On a Sustainable Future of the Earth’s Natural Resources, Springer Earth System Sciences, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-32917-3_24, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
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these leachates mix with the groundwater, a plume is formed that spreads in the direction of groundwater flow and contaminates the aquifer. Solute transport modeling serves as a powerful tool to estimate this environmental risk and helps to develop strategies for groundwater protection against contamination. Landfills or open dumps have been identified as one of the major threats to groundwater resources (United States Environmental Protection Agency 1984). The impact of landfill leachate on groundwater has been studied extensively in recent years (Flyhammar 1995; de Rosa et al. 1996; Looser et al. 1999; Abu-Rukah and Al Kofahi 2001; Saarela 2003; Vasanthi et al. 2008). Gopal et al. (1991) have investigated the extent of groundwater pollution by solid
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