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.
