Toxic Site Identification Program in Azerbaijan

The need to protect communities from hazardous waste is an important agenda for any nation. Although pollutant management and policy development are attempted in many developing countries, it is not always successful due to limited funds, project resources, and access to trained experts to conduct toxic site identification projects. For this reason, Pure Earth created the Toxic Site Identification Program (TSIP). The goal of the TSIP program is to provide reliable information and data that identifies location of toxic sites and the level of toxic severity. TSIP is significant because it provides developing countries a database of ranked toxic sites identified as hazardous risk to human health. For example, Azerbaijan is one of the most polluted post-Soviet nations, but has limited resources to address and manage its polluted sites. The Azerbaijani TSIP database is the first reliable data source that identifies hazardous pollutants in the country. Our study is significant because it discusses how the TSIP labels and ranks the level of toxic severity to human health. It is also the first data source in Azerbaijan that identifies which Soviet legacy toxic sites are affecting local communities. Although our study is specific to Azerbaijan, the TSIP method can be applied to nations with similar data limitations and the need for a database that identifies country specific environmental and hazardous locations. The data sampling method and results are mapped and accompanied by tables of the collected pollutant types to identify communities at greatest health-risk to legacy toxic sites

Nature‑based management scenarios for the Khojasan Lake

What is an effective approach to address wastewater treatment within low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)? To answer this question, we developed an integrated lake management (ILM) model which proves to reduce the pollution levels in our study site, Lake Khojasan basin, located in LMIC Azerbaijan. We found that the inflow of the treated wastewater into the lake can be a reliable approach to effectively restore the lake’s ecosystem. Our model suggests that treated wastewater may gradually replace polluted water from the lake and support its full rehabilitation while at the same time restoring neighboring water systems. Our ILM is based on our calculated water and pollutant balance equations. According to our model, the increased investment around the lake will lead to an improvement of the treated water. From the results of this work, future studies may expand upon our cost-effective integrated lake management (ILM) model when using natural inflow patterns into wetlands to purify the water basin. Our study provides a model for researchers to use or expand upon when implementing sustainable and eco-friendly methods that can control highly polluted and mismanaged lakes within LMIC