Monitoring the contamination in the Gobind Ballabh Pant Sagar, Rihand, U.P. India

Gobind Ballabh Pant Sagar was created in 1962 on the river Rihand. The Dam is located in the state of Uttar Pradesh (24°12′9″N 83°0′29″E 24.2025°N 83.00806°E). It was commissioned for the purposes like irrigation, flood control, fishery and wild life conservation etc. along with electricity generation. Availability of coal mines in the vicinity of the reservoir resulted into raising of many thermal power plants of different capacity. Apart from this abundance of electricity encouraged the establishment of various chemical industries around it. All these thermal power plants, coal mines and chemical industries use the reservoir water for various industrial purposes like cooling and discharging effluents. These operations contaminate the hydro-environment to some extent raising some concerns. For the purpose of monitoring the degree of pollution caused by ever growing industries, a long term detailed investigation program was initiated. The studies aim at establishing the degree of chemical pollution of reservoir water which will have multifold impacts on both biotic as well as abiotic components. The studies clearly indicate that further deterioration in the quality of the reservoir water has been arrested since monitoring of the quality of reservoir water was initiated. Constant monitoring of degree of pollution in the reservoir water has achieved in evoking a general mass awareness and control on the industries and TPPs to refrain from dumping the untreated effluents directly in the reservoir. This paper presents the details of the observations carried out in different seasons during August 2007 to October 2009.