Seasonal biogeochemical profiling of an unlined landfill in rural Victoria (Australia): implications for stream and groundwater contamination

Unlined landfills and waste transfer stations lack collection systems to prevent groundwater pollution. Unmonitored leakage into shallow groundwater can lead to eutrophication of freshwater ecosystems. Such sites are fairly common in rural Australia, and seven years of groundwater and leachate biogeochemical data taken near a rural landfill in Beaufort (Victoria) Australia, showed that interacting biogeochemical cycles (i.e. C, N, S, Fe) influenced contaminant transport into groundwaters seasonally. Reductive dissolution of iron oxyhydroxides coupled with alkalinity spikes was coupled to higher carbon turnover rates within a methanogenic landfill cell. This process appeared to occur mainly during summers and less during winters. Dissolved trace metal concentrations (Co, Cu, Ni, Zn) alternated with increases in dissolved iron, but with less frequency during the winter months. Nitrate and sulphate however seasonally alternated with high nitrate/low sulphate during the winter, and low nitrate/high sulphate during the summer, within the landfill cell. The seasonal variability of nitrate and sulphate in landfill leachate was also reflected in the down-flow groundwater chemistry.