ASSESSMENT OF HINDON RIVER WATER QUALITY

Abstract

River water is frequently used for drinking, irrigation, industrial supplies, agriculture, fisheries and power development. Water is also utilised for the disposal of industrial wastes and sewage. Therefore, the quality of river water depends upon the catchment characteristics, land use in catchment area and the last but not least, the quality of effluents disposed off in the river by different industries and towns. It is not possible to keep the water bodies in pristine or of uniform quality throughout the entire stretch. However, it is necessary that the various stretches of water bodies are maintained at the characteristic quality level which will sustain the respective uses of the stretches. In order to identify the areas requiring such maintenance, the traditional organised uses of the various stretches and status of water quality are required to be known. Hindon is an important river of western Uttar Pradesh which collects wastewaters from major towns like Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar and Ghaziabad. Many sugar, pulp and paper, dairy product, distilleries also discharge into Hindon. Assessment of Hindon river water quality has been atttempted earlier by Verma et.al. (1971), Verma et.al. (1975), Verma et.al. (1980) and Seth (1991). However, their basic emphasis was on pollutional strength of wastewater. No work has been done to find its suitability for irrigation use. In the present work an effort has also been made to measure the colour of the river water in qualitative terms alongwith assessing its suitability for irrigation use.