River water quality managament

Abstract

RIVER WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT newlineSUDHA SIPPI newline newlineABSTRACT newlineUrban rivers in developing countries face increasing pollution due to the discharge of treated, partially treated, and untreated wastewater from domestic and industrial sources. Despite numerous pollution abatement efforts, particularly in the developing world, the quality of urban rivers remains below regulatory standards. One of the main reasons for this is lack of correct assessment of pollution in the rivers before deciding the specific pollutions abatement for a river. In the last two-decade, the use of Multi criteria decision making techniques (MCDM) has been made in different fields of Environmental and Water resources. These MCDM methods are capable of handling multiple criteria simultaneously for finding the best alternatives for benchmarking/ranking or performance evaluation. Unfortunately, literature in this field has revealed that use of MCDM technique for ranking/ benchmarking of river stretches has not been investigated. It would therefore be worthwhile to explore the use of MCDM technique of ranking/benchmarking of river stretches and then develop appropriate pollution abatement measures for the worst ranked polluted stretches. Further, since the effluent from Sewage Treatment Plants being discharged into a receiving water body or river represents a Cause and Effect relationship, the performance evaluation of Sewage treatment plants is equally important for correct assessment of pollution in the river. Thus, the present research is aimed to address these issues. It proposes a comprehensive methodology for an effective river water quality management plan by combining the benchmarking of river stretches and Sewage treatment plants (STPs); and then using river restoration measures and other conventional pollution abatement measures for improving the water quality in polluted rivers. newline newline The first part of the study employs a modified Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), a MCDM method that couple water-quality