Assessment of the fecal pollution of a river.

Abstract

Over the past years river pager has been having fecal pollution leading to water quality deterioration. This research aims to assess the fecal contamination of river pager based on the three objectives; identification of different sources of contamination, simulating the temporal variation of fecal contamination and identification of appropriate mitigation measures. Identification of different sources of pollution was done using questionnaires, assessment of different land uses and carrying out testing of fecal coliform at upstream, midstream and downstream. simulating of temporal variation was done by SWAT2012 version where SWAT was used to model bacterial contamination concentration. The model was calibrated and validated using SWAT-CUP software. the validated model was used to simulate temporal variation for the year 2022. The best management practices were done by scenario analysis in swat. The different sources of contamination of rive pager were found to be open defecation, open dumping of waste in the river and livestock operation. The swat model shows a satisfactory results with NSE of 0.50 and R2 0.54 for flow and NSE of 0.52 R i2 0.56 for bacterial model. The best management practice was watershed restoration from the swat scenario analysis and construction of sanitation facilities at the swimming sites from the questionnaires.