Analysis of Leachate Contamination Potential of a Municipal Landfill Using Leachate Pollution Index

Abstract

The health hazards and environmental degradation from the uncontrolled and unlined landfills are well known facts.Leachate Pollution Index (LPI) is a quantitative tool by which the leachate pollution data of landfill sites can be reported uniformly.The LPI is an increasing scale index and has been formulated based on Delphi technique.In this paper, the concept of LPI is described in brief and LPI for active landfills in Mylai Balaji Nagar, Pallikkarani coming under Alandur Municipality and in Radha Nagar, Chromepet coming under Pallavaram Municipality is calculated based on the actual field datas.The LPI value for Pallikkaranai leachate and Periyaeri leachate was 37.006 and 15.325, respectively.This shows the Pallikkaranai leachate is more polluted than Peiyaeri leachate.Further, both leachates showed higher LPI value than that of 14.713 obtained for the treated leachate that can be disposed into land as per Indian standards.The study confirmed that Pallikkaranai landfill (Alandur Municiaplity) is highly polluted than the Periyaeri landfill (Pallavaram Municpality) based on LPI calculated.It is concluded that LPI value can be used as a tool to assess the leachate pollution potential from landfill sites particularly at places where there is a high risk of leachate migration and pollution of groundwater.