Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

EFFECT OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE LEACHATE ON SOIL CHARACTERISTICS

G.S.J. Shailaja, P.V.V. Prasad Rao and N. Srinivas

Abstract

The generation of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in India is growing exponentially with the rising urban population and improvement in the living standards over the last few decades leading to indiscriminate utilization of land for MSW disposal. As a result, the load on dumping yard sites is significantly increasing and as of now this is concern due to leachate generation from disposed MSW and subsequent pollution, which adversely affects both soil and water resources. The present study is an attempt to assess the effects of MSW leachate on soil and water resources. To realize the effects of MSW leachate three sites were considered which includes leachate exposed site (LES), partly exposed site (PES) and control soil (CS). The three sites are located in and around Kapuluppada dump site which falls under Visakhapatnam city limits. The LES soil receives more leachate washings due to its close proximity with MSW dump heaps compared to the PES soil. The third site, i.e. CS is nearer to the plane grassland, far away from the MSW dump heaps and free from contamination. The soil samples were analyzed for physico-chemical parameters using standard analytical methods. The results showed that among the three experimental sites the LES showed high concentration of heavy metals and microbial biomass followed by PES and CS. The study reveals that MSW leachate had not shown significant effect on organic carbon and microbial biomass, may be due to increase in soil pH which reduces metal toxicity.