Rating of Hazardous Waste Dumps in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab

Abstract

In India, about 90% of the hazardous waste is disposed in open dumps which are neighboring to large cities, releasing harmful contaminants. A huge number of un-engineered landfills exist in developing countries those are possibly unsafe to the environment and also release toxic materials to the groundwater in leachate form. The toxic materials form the dumpsites percolate through subsurface and may have great potential to contaminate groundwater, therefore these dump sites need to be prioritized. In this prospect, different hazard rating systems can be used as applicable to evaluate and prioritize those potentially hazardous dumpsites to take appropriate remedial measures. Three ratings systems are used to assess the groundwater contamination by – different ranking system (DRASTIC and mGW-HARAS, SIMRAS). In the present study two hazardous waste dump Sites from Himachal Pradesh and Punjab was considered as these two states has increased generation of hazardous waste with poor management facility. When used for ranking system for hazardous waste landfills in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, SIMRAS system responds relatively well and observed to be the most sensitive and convenient system than other rating systems like DRASTIC, mGW-HARAS system. The rating scores observed from DRASTIC, mGW-HARAS and SIMRAS were showing different variations especially for DRASTIC. The performance of three systems in sensitivity analysis for the above Sites were also analyzed. It was observed that mGW-HARAS and SIMRAS respond better to change in site condition than DRASTIC, which shows zero sensitivity. In SIMRAS soil permeability, is the most important parameter to affecting the groundwater contamination potential of hazardous waste sites in Himachal and Punjab. The rating system proposed in the study and based on source- pathway- receptor approach. The study of these three systems employs only the major sites parameters that are derived and based on a review and case studies, literature. The best and worst values of the parameters are based on literature, design standards and field values. In this paper the concept of the leachate pollution index, a tool for quantifying the leachate pollution potential of landfill Sites. It has been described and demonstrated by comparing the leachate contamination potential of two Sites. It has been found that the leachate generated from the Site-1 can have more contamination potential in comparison to the Site-2 because of the stabilization of the landfills waste. LPI is an increasing scale index and has been formulated based on the Delphi technique