Analysis of Errors Involved in the Estimation of Leachate Pollution Index Due to Nonavailability of Leachate Parameter

An important part of maintaining a solid waste landfill is managing the leachate through proper treatment to prevent pollution into the surrounding ground and surface water. Any assessment of potential impact of a landfill on groundwater quality requires consideration of the component of leachate most likely to cause an envionental impact as well as the source of concentration of those components. Leachate pollution index (LPI) is an environmental index used to quantify and compare the leachate contamination potential of solid waste landfill. This index is based on concentration of 18 pollutants in leachate and their corresponding significance. That means, for calculating the LPI of a landfill, concentration of these 18 parameters are to be known. However, sometimes the data for all the 18 pollutants included in the LPI may not be available to calculate the LPI. In this study, the possible errors involved in calculating the LPI due to nonavailability of data are reported by the author. The leachate characteristic data for solid waste landfill at Chittagong in Bangladesh have been used to estimate these errors. Based on this study, it can be concluded that the errors may be high if the data for the pollutants having significantly high or low concentration are not available. However, LPI can be reported with a marginal error if the concentrations of the nonavailable pollutants are not completely biased.