Moisture and Suction in Sanitary Landfills in Semiarid Areas

Abstract

Waste‐disposal practices in poor Third World communities can have extremely adverse environmental impacts, especially with regard to ground‐water pollution. The water‐balance or water‐budget method has been developed and used to predict leachate production from sanitary landfills. This study examines the detail of moisture profiles in three landfills located in semiarid climates in a Third World country. It concludes that one of the components of the water balance that is most difficult to define or estimate is the storage capacity of the refuse body. This appears to be greatly influenced by the properties and disposition of the layers of intermediate cover. This information is most important for the design of low‐cost, environmentally acceptable landfills for Third World communities. The study also investigates soil moisture suction in landfills and concludes that even in semiarid areas, soil moisture suction in landfills is sufficiently low to enable uninhibited bacteriological activity to take place.