Landfills – territorial issues of cities from North-East Region, Romania

Landfilling prevails in waste management options in Romania like others new EU members, being contrary to the concept of waste hierarchy promoted in recent years by EC. Waste disposal is done usually in non-compliant landfills and Government established a program to close these sites. This paper aims to analyse the transition from traditional waste management systems to an integrated system at national, regional and local scale. Assessment of landfills location based on buffer analysis (using GIS techniques) is made according to the proximity of five critical factors (CF) such as: residential area, industry & commercial units, agricultural lands, rivers & lakes, forest and protected areas, all these factors being sensitive to pollution. Thus, most of these old sites are badly or improperly located related to surroundings and only few have an acceptable location in the study area! Therefore, the proposed method can be a necessary tool in EIA studies of these environmental threats at regional scale.