Environmental impact assessment of The Waste Management System inMuscat: using Al Amerat landfill as a case study.
Khadija Al kindi, Helmut Yabar, Yoshiro Higano, Takeshi Mizunoya,
Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan

1-Introduction:
Muscat is the capital and most important city in the Sultanate of Oman. Modern residential,commercial and industrial developments have spread beyond its old capital limits; intosurrounding satellite townships connected with highways and modern utilities. Most of thedevelopment are new and are founded on the newly found wealth of oil. As of the 1970s, thesituation started to change drastically within the city, as was the case in other parts of theSultanate. The country witnessed tremendous economic development including industrialization,
urban sprawl and commercial activities[1] .Oman is a middle-income economy that is heavily
dependent on dwindling oil resources. Because of declining reserves and a rapidly growing labor
force, Muscat has actively pursued a development plan that focuses on diversification,industrialization, and privatization, with the objective of reducing the oil sector's contribution toGDP [2].
Oman has witness a rapid change in the total population over the last decade, with a populationof around 700,000 in 1970 and today the population is estimated to be more than 3.6 million.
Almost 25% of the population live in the capital city Muscat, within a total area of 35,00 square
Kilometers. Muscat only covers 1.1% of the total country’s area and therefore it is regarded ahighly dense region compared to other parts and cities in Oman [3] .
1-1 Current Waste Management Infrastructure:
With the growth of population, urbanization and affluence, disposal of municipal solid waste(MSW) has become a major environmental challenge affecting people throughout the world. Nottill recently Oman started to focus on improving the waste management sector; Oman has only
one engineered landfill that is located in the capital city and still uses open dump sites in theinterior regions. There are over 350 open dump site scattered over the country, the government isworking to rehabilitate and close most of the open dump site and replace them with engineered
landfills [4] .
Currently in Oman there are no other treatment facilities, and therefore dumping waste into thelandfill is the only and ultimate way to dispose solid waste. No other disposal processes arepracticed. Solid waste management scenario in Oman is marked by lack of disposal facilities [2].
Solid waste, industrial waste, e-wastes etc are directly to the landfills that are scattered across thecountry [5].

The problem of solid waste needs to be addressed; environmentally and in an engineered ways.
The existing landfill is reaching to it fully capacity so quickly especially with the economicallygrowth in Muscat. Hence, a strategic plan for a proper management of solid waste in Muscat
region is required with different treatment facilities.

2- Study area and Al Multaqa landfill:
Muscat is the capital city; it is divided into six states. The total area is 35,00 kilometer squareand the population is around 780,00 almost 45% of the population that occupy only 1.1% of
the totals country area and hence it is the most dense city in Oman [6].
Oman generates more than 1.7 million tons of solid waste each year. The average per capita
waste generation is more than 1.2 kg per day, which is equivalent to about 4700 tons ofmunicipal waste every day. Al Multaqa landfill is the first engineered landfill in Oman and it
is located in the capital city Muscat, the first cell started to operate early 2011 and its
capacity 76,048 square meters, the life span if the first year was estimated to be end of 2014.
The total landfill site, spreads over an area of 9.1 hectares, consists of 5 cells with a total
capacity of 10 million m3 of solid waste, the landfill is expected to operate for another 15years. Each cell has 16 shafts to take care of leachate. All the shafts are interconnected inorder to facilitate movement of leachate to the leachate pump.
2-1 Current scenario:
The general schematic of the waste management system currently is presented in figure 1;
almost 100% of the waste generated is collected and directly disposed to the sanitary
landfills. There is no segregation or recycling activities and the collection system is a dropoff collection; variable sizes of bins are allocated between 4-6 houses. Treatment; there isn’t
any RMF in Muscat and the waste are transferred directly to the landfill.

Figure 1: Current Waste Flow in Muscat

3- Date collection:
3-1 Waste generation and composition:
The date that is used in the research was from last year 2013, from January to December. The
average amount of waste dumped into Al multaqa landfill is 19, 00 tone in 2013. The totalstamount of waste in 1 cell up to January 2014 in tones is 670,000. The amount of solid
waste received by the landfill exceeded the expectation and hence the landfill is going toreach its full capacity before the estimated time.

Figure 2: Waste generation and input to the landfill.

Fig 2 shows the amount of waste received by the landfill during the year of 2013 bothcommercial and household waste, on average 27% of waste dumped to the landfill werecommercial. There was a steep decrease in the waste dumped in landfill in Jun and the trend
remained steady to the end of the year. As mention before, the capital city Muscat is divided
into six state. All of the states use the same landfill, due to the increase in the waste
generation and to maintain the landfill capacity, only five of the state continued to use Al
multaqa landfill.

Figure 3: waste Characterization of Al Multaqa landfill.
The starting point to estimate the potential environmental impacts such GHG , from waste
disposal and other waste treatment is know the waste composition [7] . Overall solid waste in
Oman is characterized by very high percentage of recyclables [2]. Waste characterization andquantification is done twice a year in the landfill, the composition of waste for the year 2013 isillustrated in fig 3, and it is clearly that recyclables percentage is over 50% of the total waste
composition. Out of 50%, plastic had the highest proposition with 26% followed by textiles andpapers. 22% of the waste account of organic waste.
The country is yet to realize the recycling potential of its municipal waste stream. Most of thewaste is sent to authorized and unauthorized dumpsites which could create serious environmentand health issues.

4- Methods:
The IWM-2 (Integrated Waste Management) model is used to evaluate different alternative
scenarios for the management of waste streams and their effects on the environment including
water emissions and gas emissions such CO2 and GHG. Parameters can be varied to test different
scenarios, which can be compared with reference to the current scenario [8].
The system will be focusing on assessing different scenarios; the scenarios will include an
optimized waste collection system and efficient sorting followed by one or more of the following
options:
1. Materials recycling.
2. . Biological treatment of organic materials will ideally produce marketable compost andalso reduce volumes for final disposal.

3. Thermal treatment such as RDF burring of Refused-Derived Fuel and burning of Paperand Plastic-Derived Fuel (PDF) .
4. Landfill. This can increase amenity via land reclamation but a well-engineered site willat least minimize pollution and loss of amenity.
Figure 3 shows the summer of the different scenarios that is going to be used in theresearch and will use the model to assess the potential environmental impacts.

Figure 3: a potential schematic waste flow of the proposed new waste management
system.

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[2]

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[3]

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[4]

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[6]

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[7]

M. Data, “CHAPTER 2 WASTE GENERATION , COMPOSITION,” 2006.

[8]

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