Cleaning the river Damodar (India): impact of COVID-19 lockdown on water quality and future rejuvenation strategies

Abstract

Globally, it is established that the partial lockdown system assists to improve the health of the total environment due to inadequate anthropogenic actions in different economic sectors. The ample research on fitness of environment has been proved that the strict imposition of lockdown was the blessings of environment. The river Damodar has historical significance and lifeline for huge population of Jharkhand and West Bengal state of India but in the recent years the water quality has been deteriorated due to untreated industrial effluents and urban sewage. The main objective of this study is to examine the water quality of river Damodar during and prelockdown phase for domestic use and restoration of river ecosystem. A total of eleven (11) effluent discharge sites were selected in prelockdown and during lockdown phase. A new approach of water quality assessment, i.e., water pollution index (WPI) has been applied in this study. WPI is weightage free, unbiased method to analysis of water quality. The result shows that the physical, chemical and heavy elements were found beyond the standard limit in prelockdown period. The cation and anion were arranged in an order of Na 2+ > K + > Ca 2+ > Mg 2+ and Cl − > So 4 − > No 3 − > F − in both the sessions. WPI of prelockdown showed that about 100% water samples are of highly polluted. WPI of lockdown period showed that around 90.90% samples improved to 'good quality' and 9.10% of samples are of 'moderately polluted.' Hypothesis testing by 't' test proved that there was a significant difference (ρ = 0.05%) in values of each parameter between two periods. Null hypothesis was rejected and indicated the improvement of river water quality statistically. Spatial mapping using Arc GIS 10.4 interpolation (IDW) helps to understand spatial intensity of pollution load in two periods. This research study should be helpful for further management and spatial diagnosis of water resource of river Damodar.

Eco-restoration of river water quality during COVID-19 lockdown in the industrial belt of eastern India

“…These industrial effluents or wastes include heavy metal ions, oils, greases, acids, dissolved inorganic, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), petrochemicals, phenolic compounds, and microorganisms. The contemporary studies focused that the untreated industrial effluents and urban sewage are being discharged into the main river Damodar and its tributaries, and as a result, the quality of water has been drastically reduced (De et al 1980;Tiwary and Abhishek 2005;George et al 2010;Chatterjee et al2010;Mukherjee et al 2012;Banerjee and Gupta 2013;Pal and Maiti 2018;Savichev et al 2020;Chakraborty et al 2020a).…”

Positive effects of COVID-19 lockdown on river water quality: evidence from River Damodar, India

“…Many scholars have studied on impact of COVID-19 lockdown on river water quality using WQI method 3 – 6 , 10 , 11 . Karunanidhi et al 4 showed the effects of COVID-19 lockdown on microbial and metals contaminations in a part of Thirumanimuthar River, South India.…”

“…An assessment on river Ganga revealed that no admixing of urban and industrial effluents has brought positive improvement on river water quality in term of particular parameters at many sites of its course 18 – 25 . A recent study was conducted in an industrial catchment of river Damodar, India and it assesses the impact of lockdown on the change of water quality 10 , 11 . Qiao et al 26 , evaluated the trend of surface water quality from 2000 to 2019 and they assessed the effects of Covid-19 lockdown on Yangtze River Basin (China).…”

Extended Ecological Restoration of Bacterial Communities in the Godavari River During the COVID-19 Lockdown Period: a Spatiotemporal Meta-analysis

“…Contamination of freshwater ecosystem consequently has a deleterious impact on the aquatic biota, including microorganisms [ 15 , 51 ]. In contrast, the imposed restriction due the COVID-19 pandemic has been found to improvise the water quality and ecosystem, which was also noted in the case of river Damodar [ 27 ]. The observation was further supported by the study on river Ganga, suggesting positive implications of the lockdown towards ecosystem restoration [ 26 ].…”

“…The COVID-19 lockdown measures, travel restrictions and associated scaling down of mass gathering religious events over the past year provide a unique opportunity to evaluate the impact of minimum anthropogenic activity on the river water ecosystem. Recent studies on the river Ganga found a reduction in the biological oxygen demand (BOD), faecal coliform count and nitrate (NO 3 ) concentration and an increase in dissolved oxygen during the lockdown [ 26 , 27 ]. However, both the studies primarily focus on the quality of the river water and adopted a classical approach of assessment of physiochemical factors and microbial contaminants, and investigation was restricted to the faecal coliform and total coliform counts [ 26 ].…”