Environmental Evaluation of Municipal Landfills in Mazandaran Province based on Iran National Environmental Regulations

Regrading population growth and economic development of human societies, the disposal of municipal waste has become an environmental concern all around the world. Landfilling is a common way for the disposal of municipal wastes. Improper landfill, however, may cause a series of inverse impacts. Siting of landfills is only licensed under strict environmental considerations. This study is carried out to environmentally evaluate the active municipal landfills in Mazandaran province according to the national regulations of the Iranian Department of Environment and Waste Management organization. The Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and Hierarchical analysis processes (AHP) have been used to spatial analysis and to weight effective criteria in this study. Restricted areas were scored beside permitted areas to classify and rate the active landfills in the state. Totally, 13 sites are used for landfilling in this province. By developing the spatial competency map, these sites are evaluated environmentally. The results show that generally the active landfills of the Mazandaran cities have very low suitability while most of them non-standard and placed in the buffers of restricted areas. As a result of this study, the municipal landfill of Fereydoonkenar found to be the worst site between these 13 landfills in the Mazandaran province.