Abstract:
The river Hindon is one of the important
tributaries of river Yamuna in western Uttar Pradesh
(India) and carries pollution loads from various
municipal and industrial units and surrounding agricultural
areas. The main sources of pollution in the
river include municipal wastes from Saharanpur,
Muzaffarnagar and Ghaziabad urban areas and industrial
effluents of sugar, pulp and paper, distilleries and
other miscellaneous industries through tributaries as
well as direct inputs. In this paper, chemical mass
balance approach has been used to assess the
contribution from non-point sources of pollution to
the river. The river system has been divided into three
stretches depending on the land use pattern. The
contribution of point sources in the upper and lower
stretches are 95 and 81% respectively of the total flow
of the river while there is no point source input in the
middle stretch. Mass balance calculations indicate that
contribution of nitrate and phosphate from non-point
sources amounts to 15.5 and 6.9% in the upper stretch
and 13.1 and 16.6% in the lower stretch respectively.
Observed differences in the load along the river may
be attributed to uncharacterized sources of pollution
due to agricultural activities, remobilization from or
entrainment of contaminated bottom sediments,
ground water contribution or a combination of these
sources.
