Determination of the sanitary protection zone of municipal waste landfill based on evaluation of the environmental hazards: Case study of the Zhytomyr territorial community, Ukraine

Abstract

Today, Ukraine is far from European standards, and the country's waste management system remains confronted with environmental and technogenic problems, with 7 % of the territory occupied by landfills. Most settlements in Ukraine do not have solid waste management programs or sanitation schemes. Landfills, and especially municipal solid waste dumps, are significant contributors to air, water, and soil pollution. The objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the environmental impact of landfills, to translate them from a descriptive and abstract plane to a mathematical plane, and to identify the sanitary protection zones currently utilized for landfills. The subject of this study is the municipal waste landfill of the Zhytomyr territorial community (Ukraine), a typical Ukrainian landfill operated with minimal environmental protection measures.The authors used an original approach to assess the environmental hazard of a municipal waste landfill, taking into consideration the values of absolute indicators of water pollution for specific physicochemical characteristics; maximum permissible concentrations of the studied indicators; distance from the landfill boundary; the amount of excess of the absolute indicator of pollution compared to the MPC; and the intensity of odor in the landfill. The calculated pollution indicators served as the basis for an integrated assessment of the environmental hazards posed by the municipal waste landfill.The study revealed that the Ot indicator (evaluation of the environmental hazards of municipal waste landfills) depends exponentially on the landfill boundary. Based on the value of Ot, environmental zoning was carried out: according to the calculations and taking into account the monitoring of the environmental condition in the landfill's impact zone, the authors recommended the parameters of environmental zoning on the basis of the Ot value.The purpose of this study is to clarify the sanitary protection zones that are currently used for landfills and solid household waste disposals.The research materials can also be used to create databases on landfills, enabling the development of a plan to manage them as sources of heightened environmental risk.