Małgorzata E. Wysocka
Politechnika Białostocka
Abstract
Since recently localization, building, and exploitation of landfill sites in Poland have been taking place without any guidelines and legal regulations. As a result Poland, in comparison to other European Union countries, does not score well in this respect. Unfortunately landfills, particularly from the rural area, quite often have been stored directly on the natural grounds without any protection in excavation after the exploitation of aggregate.
The aim of this article is to indicate the elements that should be taken into account during structure design, or expansion of the landfills, by focusing particularly on the groundwater quality of the terrain. In order to stress the significance of this subject, three examples of the municipal landfills that have been located in the sites of adverse geological conditions are presented, and the effect of it on the groundwater quality was carried out. Tested landfills have been located mainly within the limits of the non-cohesive soils with high filtration coefficients without any protection. In every case, a subsurface water-bearing layer is deposited directly under the stored landfills. Observation for analyzed landfills were made just before their closing but still during the exploitation. Therefore, the analysis regards the period from the formation of the landfill monitoring wells till today when the landfills are already closed and reclaimed. In the water samples, which were collected according to the guidelines, the following indicators were taken into account and analyzed: reaction pH, proper electrolytic conductivity, total organic carbon, heavy metals (Cu, Pb, Zn, Cd, Cr, Hg), total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
In all the tested landfills was found higher concentrations of groundwater’s pollution indicators in landfill monitoring wells located on the outlet of these waters than in the landfill monitoring wells located on their supply. An increased total organic carbon content and higher electrolytic conductivity and content of heavy metals such as copper and zinc was specifically observed. Increased contents of these indicators prove a negative impact of landfills on the water environment. Consequently, the order to close these landfills was justified, as further storage of these landfills would have a bad impact on the groundwater quality, as a result of which a complete degradation of the water-bearing level would take place. As a consequence of the cessation of the exploitation, the quality of water has improved within the limits of the landfills where the geological conditions were the best, namely, even a discountinuous layer of the poorly permeable formations stored above the water-bearing layer had a positive impact and stopped the pollution, disallowing their further migration into the highly permeable formations. In the case of the landfills situated directly on the soils of high filtration coefficients, the indicators of negative influence of deposited landfills increase even after the closing of the researched landfill sites. In this case, a further analysis of monitoring research is needed in order to see after how many years after the shutdown the landfills would cease to be damaging for the waters of the subsurface water-bearing layer.
Słowa kluczowe:
nieuszczelnione składowiska odpadów, warunki geologiczne, jakość wód podziemnych, monitoring, piezometr
064. Influence of Location of Landfills on Groundwater Quality
Keywords:
leaky landfill, geological conditions, groundwater quality, monitoring, piezometer
Pełny text / Full text
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Zadanie Czasopismo, Annual Set The Environment Protection Volume 17. Year 2015 (wersja elektroniczna) dofinansowane ze środków Ministerstwa Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego
