EIA of municipal solid waste disposal site in Varanasi using RIAM analysis

Rapid industrialization and population explosion in India has led to the migration of people from villages to cities which generate thousands of tones of municipal solid waste (MSW) daily. Waste generation and management of waste is one of the major problems these days. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) work is, therefore, becoming more and more extensive in the world. Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix (RIAM) comes under one of the options for the execution of EIA. This method is particularly advantageous over others as it provides a transparent and permanent record of analysis process while at the same time organizing the EIA procedure, which in turn considerably reduces the time taken in executing EIAs. Using this method of RIAM, EIA has been carried out on different municipal solid waste disposal options and it has been found that the sanitary landfill is the best recommended option under the existing circumstances. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.