INTRODUCTION:

A landfill site is a place where rubbishis dumped, flattened, covered with clay, and leftto decompose or break down and rotten away.Landfill sites are also called waste dumps orrubbish dumps.A landfill site can be a large holein the ground. Landfill can also be where rubbishis pill up above the ground. Landfill site are morepreferable on an igneous rock surfaces because theyare highly massive and less jointed however incases where they are affected by tectonic movementsthey well not be conducive for landfill sitelocation because they developed cracks or fissureson them .On the other hand, sedimentary rocks areless conducive for a landfill site because they areporous, jointed and consist of bedding planes whichencourages infiltration and leaching.

Landfill sites should be in placeswhere rubbish can be managed without causingdamages to people's health. It is against thisbackground that they are law to prohibits dumpingof rubbish or waste in places that are not licensedby the various local government authorities andcities or urban councils and as landfill sites.

Classification of waste:The type of waste dump on the landfill site are both

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solid and liquid which can be classified into twobroad categories which may include;

General Waste (domestic waste) .These are rubbish fromurban areas, mainly from homes, offices and buildingsites. It includes builders' waste, garden rubbish,rubbish from people's houses, and rubbish from towns.Collecting, transporting and managing rubbish in townareas is the responsibility of the local authority.The local council must use money it gets fromcollecting wastes from people in its area to providethis service. In other words, when you pay taxesrates, you are paying for your rubbish to be takenaway. General waste is thrown away at General landfillsites.

unplanned landfill sites

The waste that we generate in cities can have adetrimental effect on the health of people and theenvironment if:

A landfill site is very close to where people live,

or it is poorly developed (for example, where poisonedwater gets into the ground and rivers)

or it is badly managed (for example there is no fencearound it,

or that waste is not covered daily with clay,)

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or the waste is not taken to managed landfill sites,but just dumped in open spaces.

Hazardous Waste: on the other hand are waste whichmight poison the environment, and damage people'shealth. This waste comes from factories, mines andhospitals and includes poisonous material (toxicwaste),

things that carry germs,

things that may explode or easily catch fire.

Dangerous waste is classed from 1 (for verydangerous) to 10 (for only a little dangerous).Dangerous material must only be disposed of at a sitethat is fit enough to contain it(that is a modernlandfill site).

Atypical modern landfill site is lined with a layerof clay and protective plastic to prevent the waste andleaching into the ground water. The lined unit is thendivided into disposal cells only one cell is open at atime to receive waste. After a day’sactivity, thegarbage is compacted and covered with layer of soil tominimize odor, pest, and winddisturbances.A network ofdrains at the bottom of the landfills collects theleachate that flow through the decomposing waste. Thiscan be illustrated in the diagram below.

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A modern landfill site

What problems do people have with landfill sites?

In the past, due to the low rate of urbanizationand population growth as well as economic development,rubbish dumps was minimal and were placed close topoor, black communities. People who lived nearby suchdumps were often not asked about how they felt abouthaving the sites in their areas but that is not thecase today as they have been an unprecedented increasein world population numbers which have been estimatedto be close to 7.5BILLION and also high rate ofurbanization which cause the population to increase inurban areas and produce too much waste. Hence, thereare in fact a number of challenges or issues that thepeople who live or work near rubbish dumps are facing.

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The waste that we generate in cities and towns canhave of detrimental effect to our live and livelihood,the health of people and the environment.

This may leads to pollutant and other negativeeffects such as, leachate, landfill gas, surfacerunoff, noise, bad odor and smoke, wind-blown litterand dust, birds, vermin and insects ground watercontaminations which affects human health and theenvironment.see figure 1.the most important emissionsof dumps and landfills are leachate and landfill gas.These occur on an unplanned landfill site. They canonly be avoid when the pollutants are collected antreated at well designed, constructed and operatedlandfills.

Risk of Uncontrolled Dumping On Human Health. Theunplanned dumping of waste affects human healthdirectly(illnesses) and indirectly(dead) especiallythose living closer to the dump-site.The most serious

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problems are that it will affect the terrestrial foodchain,aquatic food chain,drinking water supply, causeair borne emissions and the transfer of pathogens bybiological vector.A further pressing issue is the factthat municipal, hospitals and industrial waste in thedeveloped and in most of the less developed countriescities and townsare disposed of illegally. Most of themconsist of infectious materials like needles from thehospitals,commercial waste like used oil, batteries,and paints or inorganic industrial waste like acids,metals, and asbestos. Hence, protecting human healthmeans effective protection and management, and adequatewaste disposal is one of its essential components. Seediagram below.

Complex of problems with waste pickers on landfills.

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The only source of income to the poor in developedand less developed countries remains recycling ofwaste. They together with their families live arounddumpsite where the collect recyclable out of the wastewithout any protective equipment.This condition exposesthem to injuries and infections cause by sharp objects,insects, rats, and direct injection from food.Household pets can also transfer diseases from oneperson to another if the dumpsite is not fenced.Insects like mosquetoes can also transfer diseases fromwaste to humans. Therefore waste picking should beprohibited or the area affected should be rehabilitatedand burn food waste to help reduce insects. See photoof waste pickers in a landfill site in Argentina.

Particular emission during landfill operation.

Some pollutants are cause during operation forinstant noise, odor, smoke and wind-blown litter and

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dust. These noises are generated during operations bythe haulage trucks, mobile compactors and bulldozersand can be reduce by sitting landfill site outside thebuildup areas.The typical odor of the landfills is aconsequence of unavoidable biological degradationprocesses this can be reduced by pre-treatment. whileFire and smoke result from auto-ignition with highdegree of organics and combust able materials orsitting of fires to the waste by the workers in orderto minimize waste volume or arson caused by people notbelonging to the landfill .These fires are usually verydifficult to extinguish and often the shoulders formany months and under unfavorable conditions can getout of control and ignite the whole dumpsite. This canbe reduced by reducing the air in the waste body .Seefig 4.

Next to the uncontrolled release of toxic gases.

Burning waste generate a lot ofsmoke. Smoke ofburning waste is sometime a dominant factor of theatmospheric load with part cute matter in cities ofdeveloping countries. Wind-blown sand include plasticspapers, they are thrown during unloading or from thesurface of the waste .the can affect the neighborhood.Dust also became a problem when waste consists of ashesand if waste is not covered with a soil whichdesiccates in dry periods which may expose man torespiratory and lungs problems.This can be reducesthrough compactment of waste.

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Effect on surface and ground water.

The most important impact of landfill siteis itimpact on leachate and surface and ground water. Baseon surface water, waste are dump on rivers creeks andlake sand has resulted to water pollution with the maincause being run-off from the dump areas. The waste willdepend on the type of waste (solid and liquid). Thesehave a great impaction the marine organisms.But thevolume of the run-off depends on the intensity ofrainfall or the property of the soil or waste. Forinstant the rate of run-off is high in those countrieswhere the rate of rainfall is high. Therefore they arethe need for waste treatment and the construction ofditches around the disposal sites for run-offcollection.

Leachate is generated when rainfall seeps into alandfill body. The water percolates the waste andsolutes inorganic waste compounds. Leachate fromlandfills for municipal waste is often 10-100 timeshigh loaded with organic compound than municipalsewage. In addition to these,leachates contain ammoniain high concentration which is toxic to fishes. It isimportant noting that the height of leachate isdetermined by the climatic conditions and wastecharacteristics. See Figure 4 showing some potentialsources of ground water contamination

Ground water pollution is the main task ofdesignand construction of landfills, in oppose to non-

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dumps. Landfills have to have a bottom liner a leachatecollection system and management. See diagram below.

Effects on landfill Gas

Anaerobic reaction of organic materials inlandfills produces land fill gas.Landfill gases mainlyconsist of a gas called methane gas, carbon dioxide aswell as other trace gases.

Landfill gas generation depends on the amount ofwaste disposed of, the content of organics and abioticconditions like the moisture and temperature. Methaneis inflammable and explosive in the air in a range ofconcentration from5%to15%.Carbondioxide affects therespiratory center of human being and even if oxygenconcentration is sufficient, more than 5%ofcarbondioxide in the air led to headache andfertic.8%arelethal. Many trace gases are extremely odorintensive, some are very toxic(like hydrogen andsulphur) or carcinogenic(e.g chlorinated hydro-carbons).landfill gases can also lead to explosives usuallywhen the organicair are in an explosive mixtureespecially along an outlet of a small pipe or a gaswell.This can flare back into the waste an cause fireon the landfill bodies .Also some of these gases arevery poisonous because of toxic substances inthemespecially on those landfills .

Apart from damage to landfill gas, the influence ofmethane gas on the green-house effect should beconsidered .the effect of methane on the global warming

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is 50 times higher than the effect of carbondioxide.After landfill restoration non-collected landfill gasmigrates through the restoration layer and displacessoil air. These damages the plants.

Due to the mixing oxygen in the root zone, most ofthe effectdescribe above can only be coped throughengineering methods of gas collection and treatment.

Effect on Fauna and Flora

Dumps and landfills influences both the fauna andflora on the site and in its neighborhood of dump sitesthis is especially with the case of the ploreferationof birds, vermin rats, insects, and birds are vectorsof diseases which causes a serious problems forexample.

Birds on landfills all over the world

Landfill sites are very attractive to many birdsall over the world. Especially omnivores like seagullsand scavengers like some types of cows find a lot offood in newly tipped waste.

Typical are colonies of one or two species whichdominate the landfill in huge and dense flocks Theunloading haulage trucks are surrounded by excitedbirds and the whole surface of non-compacted or non-covered waste is overcast with them earth cover.

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The over population of birds on landfills can becontrolled by adequate landfill operation(small tippingareas, compaction, and

Rats and snakes on a controlled dump in middle-east

The particular dump site was placed in a semi -aridarea: The distance to residential zones was about 30km.The waste which typically contained a lot of organicswas not compacted, just spread with a bull dozer.Andthe high rate of food waste attracts rat populationwaste pickers. The people living on the land fill siteswere seriously affected by rodents.

Foxes can carry rabies which can infectdogs.Fencing your dump may be the best strategy to keepfoxes out.Although, Bears donot usually spread disease,they can injured people if they attack.They are knownto have destroys fences and as such only electric fencecan stop them from trace-passingon to dump sites.

As a consequence of this abnormal rat population inthe semi-deserts,snakes discovered the dump sites ashabitat, and once again due to the optimal livingconditions a small population increased rapidly.

The hugged rick for health and life of the landfillworkers require urgent measures. Compaction can help toreduce Bears, fox, rate and snake population on thelandfills.

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Cockcroaches are yet other insects which dominateslandfill sites for example in a landfill site inGermany where an open rotting landfill with anaerobicbiological decomposition was left before compaction, anexplosion of the population of cockcroches occurred.

They were release from a food processing industrieswhich deliver weekly wood shavings to the municipallandfills.The delivered wood deed contains somecockcroches.if not for the windrows on the sides thatprovides warmth shelter, good oxygen supply andorganicfood they wouldnot have been any cockcroches but thenthere are grea

t in numbers. The special case shows that rottinglandfills are easily to be protected againstcockcroches by compacting the windows after anintensive attack on these insects.

These three examples illustrate the necessity of agood landfill operation to prevent infections frombirds, insects, snakes and cockcroches.Quick coveringand compactment can make the differentas it will helpto reducethe problems.

However the effect on the flora can be minimal andless important. Damage to plants can occur through theeffect of landfill gas on the surroundingdumpsites .this can be minimize also through liners

Farming in anuncontrolled dumpsite may lead tocontamination of the plants.Therefore organizational

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measures should help solve this problem of ingestingpolluted food.

Emission after landfill closure

After all the environmental impact resulting fromthe landfill operation has ceased to exist but thedumpsites is not restored or has exerted it minimumperiod of operation or where ongoing processes on thelandfill continuous, the landfill will remain a woundin the land scape excess rainfall can cause leachate.

To prevent this from happening, there was the needto integrate the dumpsites to the landscape and toregister a landfill is as to ensure knowledge about itexistence in the future.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that all dumpsite hasenvironmental impact a landfill can be designed,constructed in a way that the negative impact on theenvironment are reduce to a minimal level. There arealso some indirect impact like landuse conflicts andvisible degradation of the urban environment that needto be considered in (EIA).

The Environmental Impact Assessement should perform thefollowing;

-Stage 1; Site selection14

In the course of selecting a suitable site foralandfill an accompanying EIAis the most appropriateinstrument to compare the ecological sensitivity andconsequences of project related impact at differentsites.

-Stage 2: Landfill design

During the phase of landfill design, the EIA is avaluable tool to adapt the basic design, the barriersystems and emission treatment plans to the specificsituation of the site selected.

It should be an objective for every party involvein landfill planning to integrate design and EIA asclosed as possible.

The EIA has to cover the construction, operationand closure phases of operation

-They are also the need for community educationwhich will help change people behavior towards theburning of plastics, scavenging, dumping of batteriese.t.c.

-Also waste dump areas should be separated fromhomes, and waste recycling should also be promoted.

They should be frequent covering of waste in orderto reduce potential risk of contracting diseases,reduce waste, volume, reduce the present of waste

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carrying insects and reduce the attractive nature andaccess to waste by bears, rats and other animals.

-People should also stop inhaling smokewill helpreduce respiratory symptoms of diseasesthrough burningof waste only in downwind from homes and banning peoplefrom entering into the waste dump during burningperiods.

-Batteries should also be recycle in order toreduce toxic waste, stop the risk of of acid burns topeople especially children in the dumpsites

They should also be the ban of some waste productslike plastics which are non boidegradable.

Bibliography

OELTZSCHNER,H.:MUTZ,D., (1986): Guidelines for anAppropriateManagemnt of sanitary LandfillSites(GTZ), Eschborn,Germany.

World Bank, (1991),Environmental Sourcebook, volume11- Sectoral Guidelines

World Bank Technical paper Number 140

The World Bank, Washington,D.C,USA

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