SEDIMENT-WATER INTERACTION

Abstract

River water constitute an important water resources. There is an imperative need to assess the quality of river water for its intended use. The sediment acts as a reservoir of many micropollu-tants in a polluted river. Treatment of the incoming waste can reduce the pollution loads of river and change the quality. The sediment may continue to leach pollutants to the purified water and make them over burdened. Further the leaching can be both ways i.e. from sediment to water as well as from water to sediment. Present work has been done to estimate the effect of polluted sediment on overlying clear water of varying pH. Sediment samples from three sites of river Hindon were collected and dry sediment were mixed with test water of varying pH in the range of 3 to 11. The overthrown materials from sediment to water were analysed for evaluating the impact. The results indicate that the amount of overthrow depends on the sampling locations which differ in nature due to various pollution loads and other streams joining the river. The potential of sludge to further pollute the overlying water is large at Tapri and Barnawa while these effects are very low in NOIDA sediment.