Impacts of Metehara Sugar Factory on Awash River Water Quality
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Date
2020-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Water quality refers the characteristic of water that influence its suitability for particular use that
is how well the quality meets the needs of specific use. Good quality water has social,
economical and environmental benefits and determined by its physical, chemical and biological
characteristics. In our country the quality of water deteriorated through time due to various
natural and anthropogenic activities. Awash River is one of the rivers found in our country and
serves as a drinking source for millions of people. But it has been impaired by various types of
contamination due to waste released from different socio - economic activities in its basin. This
makes the lower awash community to depend on poor and unsafe water consumption that
exposes them to water quality related health risks. The aim of this study was to investigate the
impacts of wastewaters from Metehara sugar factory on the water quality of Awash River. Both
the effluents and the river water samples at selected points were analyzed for physicochemical
parameters. The results for different parameters range for turbidity (21.85-192 NTU), EC (518-
17,590 518µS/cm), temperature (20.5-44.5 0
c), phosphate (0.785-2.85 mg/L), COD (745-89,290
mg/L), BOD5 (476 mg/L-71,457 mg/L) and oil and grease (30-77 mg/L) were the major drinking
water quality concern in Awash River which were higher than Ethiopian (CES 58) and WHO
maximum allowable limit of drinking water standard. Most of the river samples result also
shown variation after dissolved with wastewaters. This clearly indicates the pollution load of
wastewaters. The river is threatened by factory's wastewaters and might induce health risk.
Therefore, there should be up to date treatment plant for factory wastewater and continuous
monitoring and evaluation of the effluent quality before discharging into the river should be
carried out
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Keywords
physicochemical parameters;, drinking water;, Awash River