ASSESSMENT OF WATER CONTAMINATION AND SEWAGE WORKS IN RIPARIAN CITIES OF THE GANGA

Abstract

The Ganges River is the largest river in India originating in the Himalayas and transports huge amount of sediments along with the Brahmaputra River, another Himalayan river, covering stretches from Indian sub-continent to the Bay of Bengal. Witnessing the importance and need of Ganges as the lifeline to millions of people and the subcontinent's ecosystem, I decided to assess the heavy metals associated with the river in its stretch. The samples were analyzed for a number of physio-chemical parameters using standard laboratory procedures and giving prime thrust to determine the heavy metal concentrations (Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn, Pb, Cd, Cr, Se,As) of surface water at two different locations of the Ganges. The presence of metals were found out in the ICPM Spectrometer. The amount of heavy metals(in ppm) were presented in the form of bar charts and also discussed for its impact. Industries and domestic effluents' components act as major sinks for metals in the down stretches of the river. The presence of metals have significant variations with respect to cities as well as discharge points. The STP for the study area was studied for energy efficiency after treated effluent discharges were estimated for different months and the power generated was calculated for months of an year and the average power generated was also estimated. Sewer Flooding Risk Analysis was done for the study area. Quality of the result for sewer flooding risk analysis depends on the reliability of the data and methods used for flood risk analysis such as resolution of geospatial data, suitability of the software used, quality of demographic, socio-economic and hydro-meteorological data.