Estimating Point and Nonpoint Source Pollutant Flux by Integrating Various Models, a Case Study of the Lake Hawassa Watershed in Ethiopia’s Rift Valley Basin

Abstract

Increasing pollutant emissions in the Lake Hawassa watershed (LHW) has led to a severe water quality deterioration. Allocation and quantification of responsible pollutant fluxes are suffering from scarce data. In this study, a combination of various models with monitoring data has been applied to determine the fluxes for Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Total Dissolved Solid (TDS), Total Nitrogen (TN), Nitrate and Nitrite-nitrogen (NOx-N), Total Phosphorous (TP) and phosphate (PO4-P). Water, wastewater and stormwater samples were collected and analyzed at eight monitoring stations from rivers and point sources and six monitoring stations of stormwater samples. The flow simulated with soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) could be very well calibrated and validated with gauge data. This flow from SWAT model, measured flow during monitoring and pollutant concentrations were used in FLUX32 to estimate pollutant fluxes of main rivers and point sources in LHW. The formulas provided by Ethiopian Roads Authority and Gumbel’s theory of rainfall frequency analysis was employed to determine the 2-years return period rainfall depth for the City of Hawassa. The integration of HEC-GeoHMS and SCS-CN with the catchment area enabled to determine stormwater pollution load of Hawassa City. The estimated pollutant flux at each monitoring stations showed that the pollutant contribution from the point and nonpoint sources prevailing in the study area, where the maximum fluxes were observed at Tikur-Wuha sub-catchments. This station was located downstream of the two point sources and received flow from the upper streams where agricultural use is predominant. Furthermore, Hawassa city has been identified as a key pollutant load driver, owing to increased impacts from clearly identified point sources and stormwater pollutant flux from major outfalls. Agricultural activities, on the other hand, covers a large portion of the catchment and contributes significant amount to the overall load that reaches the lake. Thus, mitigation measures that are focused on pollutant flux reduction to the lake Hawassa have to target on the urban and agricultural activities.