Week 6- Suitability Analysis

There is an issue in Kettleman City, California, a small city in the heart of the state's agricultural Central Valley, in which babies are being born with birth defects. Many believe that this is due to the higher-than-normal amounts of arsenic in the drinking water in the area, caused by a nearby landfill. The fact that the landfill received over 400,000 tons of hazardous waste, including PCBs, in 2009, could easily lead someone to make the assumption that the landfill is a contributor to the birth defects. However, this is also in the middle of one of the largest agricultural regions in the country and pesticides may play a role in the birth defects. Either way, because of these concerns, Senator Diane Feinstein decided to suspend the expansion of the landfill until a thorough investigation had taken place.

In this weeks lab, we performed a suitability analysis regarding the placement of a new landfill in the fictitious Gallin County, Montana. We analyzed five aspects of the land- soil drainage, distance to water sources, landcover types, distance to other landfills, and the slope- and combined the factors to find the ideal spot for a new landfill. The analysis can be done in such a way which weights all factors equally, or more weight can be placed on factors that are more important, such as slope and soil drainage in this case. It ultimately shows the best place for something to go considering all the inputted factors.

In Kettleman city, although the landfill is already built, a suitability analysis would be beneficial to see whether or not the proposed expansion should take place. If the landfill is contributing to the birth defects, which is being investigated, certainly an expansion of the site would not improve the circumstances. If a suitability analysis is performed with factors such as distance from residential areas and distance from water sources, among others- and a better, more suitable landfill location is found, then perhaps a new one in the location may open up and gradually begin to replace the existing one.

A reverse suitability analysis of sorts may also be helpful in seeking out the cause(s) of the pollution and birth defects. We can look at the site of where the landfill is currently located and examine the land features surrounding it. We can, for instance, see how far the plant is from streams and what the soil drainage quality of the area is in which it is located, and calculate the likelihood of some of the pollutants from the landfill getting into public drinking water sources.

As a waste company that was fined $2.1 million for operating unauthorized landfills and waste ponds, and as a landfill itself that was in 2003 considered to be an emitter of excessively high radiation, it would not be too hard to believe that the plant was now contributing to local birth defects. However, in these types of investigations one must remain relatively unbiased to collect the necessary facts. Suitability analysis is a useful tool in this regard, but like in the application of all GIS tools, we mustn't be too reliant on it. There is always the possibility for the data to be off, or a human or software error to be made. An on site field investigation should be made in addition to a GIS suitability analysis in order to holistically research the issue at hand.