Assesment of Soil and Water Contamination Due to Large Scale Floriculture Farming Around Lake Ziway
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Date
2015-05-31
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main environmental risk of the floricultural production is associated with the extensive
use of pesticides and herbicides and the fate of their residues in the soil and water. An
intensive use of agrochemicals is taking place in a context of weak and un-harmonized
regulations. Nevertheless, the potential of the residues from the horticulture and floriculture
systems on surface water resources, particularly Lake Ziway, the freshest water lake; on the
top of that, floriculture industries located at the shore discharging untreated effluent directly
in to the lake;
Both the small scale and large scale floriculture and horticulture farms lack adequately
trained personnel for appropriate pesticides management and appropriate organization setup.
Moreover, local communities and producers seem to remain largely unaware of the
advantages of sustainable management of natural resources leads to environmental
degradation such as land, water and soil quality degradations. Therefore, this study was
proposed with the objective of assessing the impact of floriculture industries on the soil water
quality of the area.
The necessary data are collected by direct physical site observation and assessing existing
situation of the study area and by taking sample from the soil and lake adjacent to the farms.
a total of eight samples were collected, and each has four sampling points; four sampling
points, Eight parameters were analyzed for the water samples (pH, electrical conductivity
(EC), Nitrate (No3-N), reactive phosphate (PO4), Biological oxygen demand (BOD), and
chemical oxygen demand (COD), Sulfate (SO4), Total ammonia (T-NH3).in addition to this,
the soil samples have been analyzed with five parameters ,( pH, CEC, EC, Phosphorus (P)
and total Nitrogen (TN)) for the soil SS4 were chosen as a control sample which is relatively
few meters far from the farm effluent.
The results showed higher levels of TDS (292 to 1116), EC (507 to 1874), PH (7.97to 7.82),
COD (291.2 to348.4) BOD (500 to 900) NO3-(1.09to 12.45) andPO43-(0.09 to 0.57) at the
impaired sites where the effluent was directly discharged without treatment the
concentrations also showed a very high increment when compared with the previous study
results. And the same is true for the soils, EC(307to8780),PH,( 6.48to10.53)P(5.02to29),OC,(
0.41 to7.17) also has a great difference when compared with the control sites. . In addition to
this, both the soil and water results were also compared with quality guidelines and standards,
EPA, WHO, FAO to check if the concentrations of these parameters were within the
permissible limits. The identified environmental impacts are water resource utilization, water
and soil quality degradation, and land cover changes
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Keywords
Assesment, Soil and Water, Contamination, Large Scale, Floriculture Farming, Around Lake Ziway