Chapter 5

Introduction to
Environmental Issues in Soil
Mechanics and Foundation
Areas
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General
 What is environment?
The sum total all surrounding of a living organism, including
natural forces and other living things, which provide conditions
for development and growth as well as of danger and damage.
 Construction affect an environment since it modify it
in one way or another.
 An environmental impact assessment is an
assessment of the possible positive or negative impact
that a proposed project may have on the environment,
together with consisting of the environment, social
and economic aspects.
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Cont…
 The purpose of the assessment is to ensure that
decision makers consider the ensuing environmental
impacts when deciding whether to proceed with a
project or not.
 The International Association for Impact Assessment
(IAIA) defines an environmental impact assessment as
"the process of identifying, predicting, evaluating and
mitigating the biophysical , social, and other relevant
effects of development proposals prior to major
decisions being taken and commitments made."

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Cont…
 EIAs are unique in that they do not require adherence
to a predetermined environmental outcome, but
rather they require decision makers to account for
environmental values in their decisions and to justify
those decisions in light of detailed environmental
studies and public comments on the potential
environmental impacts of the proposal.

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General Structure of Environmental Risk Assessment

 POC= Public Occupancy Criteria 5

Main components of the environment
Physical Environment:
 geology; topography; soils; climate and
meteorology; surface and ground water
hydrology and quality upstream and
downstream.
 Each and every specific issue must be assessed,
where possible in percentage (%), proportions
and types in length (km), and detailed
information must be indicated, presented and
evaluated.

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Cont…
 Biological Environment:
flora and fauna types; rare or endangered species;
significant natural sites and sensitive habitats
including parks and reserves; etc.; species of
commercial importance (medicinal plants, fish)
and reliance of the local people on these resources;
and species with potential to become a nuisance,
vectors or dangerous.

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Cont…
 Socio-economic Environment:
Socio-economic impacts of any construction and/or
development on the local community, land use and cover
and use types, land tenure systems and holding sizes,
human settlements; impacts on infrastructure facilities,
present water supply and water resources utilization;
availability of and impacts on archaeological and historical
sites, existence of any indigenous peoples, impact on
gender, control over allocation of resource use rights;
patterns of new settlements; transport patterns,
archaeological and historical sites, cultural heritages etc.

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Cont…
 Physical Cultural Resources:
Physical cultural resources defined as movable or
immovable objects, sites, structures, groups of
structures, and natural features and landscapes
that have archeological, paleontological, historical,
architectural, religious, aesthetic, or other cultural
significance. Physical cultural resources may be
located in urban or rural settings, and may be
above or below ground, or under water.

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Cont…
 Sensitive Environmental findings:
Sensitive Environmental findings that need special
concern with a corresponding impact.
 In general, the effect of infrastructure on
environment shall be checked both at the time of
construction and during the life time of the
infrastructure.

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Cont…
 The major issues that are considered (to varying
depths) within the scope of the majority of EIAs can
be summarized as:

 Landscape and visual  Water

 Ecology  Ground conditions
 Land use  Archaeology
 Traffic and transport  Cultural heritage
 Air quality
 Noise

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Environmental Geotechnics
 Application of geotechnics for environmental control.
 Broadly, geoenviromental engineering is reserved for
overall engineering of environmental projects that
encompass the earth, groundwater, safe water
containment, site remediation etc., and which require
the expertise of scientists and engineers from several
discipline.
 Almost all geoenviromental problems requiring
geotechnical expertice fall into three categories.

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Cont…
1. Design, construction, operation and
maintenance of new waste disposal and
containment facilities.
2. Isolation of containment ground.
3. Remediation of contained sites.

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Figure 1:Two general types of solid waste landfills
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Cont…
 Modern municipal solid waste and hazardous waste landfills are
generally configures as shown schematically below.

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Cont…
The Primary concern of such a landfill facility is
1) Preventing the escape of leachate
 Leachate: Fluid resulting from the leaching of
contaminants from waste, contaminated ground.
 The liner system must restrict the escape of leachate to
acceptable limit through a combination of an effective
leachate collection and removal system and a suitably
impervious seepage layer.
 See Figure in the previous slide, which is a modern
composite double liner.

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Cont…
 To assure proper performance over the long life a
waste landfill requires that there be chemical,
biological and mechanical compatibility between
several components.
 Mechanical compatibility requires consideration of
the stress-deformation and strength behaviour of each
components alone and altogether under a range of
static and dynamic loading condition.
 The leachate collection and containment function
requires application of hydraulic conductivity,
seepage, and drainage principles.
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Cont…
2) The cover
 The cover must resist infiltration of water, support
vegetation or other ground cover suitable for post-
closure landfill use.
 Must with-stand large deformations to accommodate
settlements within waste below.
 It must also provide a barrier against uncontrolled
escape of landfill gases and to support gas collection
and venting system.

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Cont…

Figure Typical landfill cover

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Cont…
3) Safety of Landfill
 The landfill must be safe against several possible
types of stability failure, both during construction and
filling periods and after closure.
 Schematic diagrams of some potential failure modes
are shown schematically in figures below.

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Cont…

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Cont…

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Cont…

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Cont…
 None of these issues can be addressed properly
without correct application of soil mechanics and
foundation engineering.
 The principles, concepts, and analytical procedures
that have been developed for stress-deformation
behavior, shear strength, consolidation and settlement
analysis, seepage and dynamic analysis of soils are
essential.

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 Isolation and Containment of
Contaminated Ground
 Isolation and containment of ground, for both
temporary and permanent applications, have a very
important role in environmental protection.
 The main purpose is to effectively prevent contact
between hazardous and toxic materials and
uncontaminated groundwater, soil and air.
 A typical containment barrier system usually involves
some type of cutoff wall, a bottom seal, a cover.

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Figure : Schematic diagram of a typical solid waste
containment Barrier System
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Cont…
Among the issues that should be addressed that requires
geotechnical expertise are:
1. The stability of slurry trenches during excavation
2. The state of stress within different types of trench
backfills; e.g., soil-bentonite, cement-bentonite, and its
influence on the hydraulic conductivity and stress-
deformation properties of backfill materials.
3. Stresses and deformations of the ground adjacent to
the slurry trench and their potential adverse effects on
structures and facilities.

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Cont…
4. Seepage and contaminant transport through the barrier walls,
floors, and covers. The susceptibility of barriers materials to
attack by the containment they are intended to contain must also
be considered.
Key Terms:
 Aquifer: Geological formation capable of transmitting
significance quantities of water under practically relevant
hydraulic gradients.
 Aquitard: Geological formations that may contain ground
water but is not capable of transmitting significant
quantities of ground water under hydraulic gradient. In
some situation, aquitards may function as confining beds.
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Cont…
 HDPE High Density Polyethylene geo-membrane
manufactured in thin sheets from synthetic polymers.
Contaminant barriers in landfills barrier systems. HDPE
also used for pipes, shafts, gas colleting systems, leachate
collecting systems.

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Cont…
In addition, it is important to consider:
 The nature of waste materials
 Details of ground water chemistry
 Soil-waste interactions
 The properties and behavior of non-aqueous phase liquids
(NAPLs)
 The generation and effects of gases.
 Mechanical and durability properties of the vast range of
geosynthetic and geosynthetic-clay composite materials that are
now used in waste containment and environmental control
systems.

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Case Studies
1) Drilling:
 Application of chemicals such as bentonite slurry
around aquifers.
 It may result in undesired flow from ground water
and lowering of artesian pressure.-There may be
settlement due to removal GW.
 Noise and Vibration from drilling can influence the
surrounding. Special noise protection sheilds are
important.

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Cont…
2) Grouting
 Any impact from grouting depends on the chemical
composition of the grout, the retention properties (e.g.
adsorption and dilution), the volume of grout used as
well as the distribution of grout in soil, rock and
transport pathways.
 Hence, it is important to know the soil and rock
parameters such as the stress state, the porosity and
the distribution and size of the fissures and properties
of pervious layers.
 The parameters that control the spread of grout are
primarily the injection pressure, the injected volume 32
and the properties of the grout.
Cont…
3) Quarries and Borrow Areas
 Selection of quarries and burrows must consider the
local drainage pattern, important wildlife areas,
present and planned parks and reserves and etc.
 A well designed burrow must have:
a) Controlled access in and out of the pit
b) Working space
c) Storage areas for stockpiling top soil and overburden
separately. etc.

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Cont…
 Upon abandonment, restoration of burrow sites is
important. Restoration steps to be taken before
abandonment are:
a. Clean-up
b. Drainage and erosion control
c. Re-contouring
d. Overburden replacement
e. Vegetation

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Assignment III
 Discuss briefly environmental issues
in Geotechnical engineering

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