Abstract:
River Hindon, a tributary of river Yamuna, India receives waste-water from municipal and industrial areas of Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar and Ghaziabad regions without prior treatment. Further, the river also receives non-point sources of pollution from agricultural land as the major landuse in the basin is agriculture. The basin is densely populated due to rapid industrialization and agricultural growth during last few decades and has socio-economic values. Due to the influx of continuous pollution load in River Hindon without prior treatment, the river's environmental matrix has become very complex. It is essential to estimate the self-purification capacity of the river in the form of de-oxygenation rate (Kd) and re-aeration rate (K,) capacity at different reaches of River Hindon. Keeping this in view, an attempt has been made in the present work to evaluate Kd and Kr values for River Hindon using Texas Water Development Board method, empirical methods based on velocity, depth and slope data and Newton-Raphson technique and estimate Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Dissolved Oxygen
(DO) values at different reaches of River Hindon using Dissolved Oxygen Balance Technique (DOBT). For the analysis, extensive data (BOD, DO, water temperature, pH and electrical conductivity) on bi-monthly basis for two annual cycles (1997-98 and 1998-99) at thirteen stations were collected and analysed. Error estimation was done using correlation statistics, standard error and mean multiplicative error approaches.
