Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Many metropolitan cities in India including the city of Hyderabad have experienced a very fast rate of urbanization and phenomenal growth of population in the past few decades. The high density of population had resulted in development of many housing colonies, industrial, commercial and institutional building complexes without matching growth in necessary infrastructure such as protected water supply, underground sewerage system and solid waste management. In this process, many of the lakes in the urban areas had given way for water quality deterioration and the lakes still surviving, in the process of urbanization are polluted by discharge of wastewater, storm water, solid wastes and other unauthorized inputs. These problems exist all over the world and especially in the developing and underdeveloped countries. In fact the standards of sanitation and management of liquid and solid waste in an urban area can be judged from the water quality status of lakes in the area. A highly polluted lake usually is a pointer of neglected environmental management in the lake catchment. Saroor Nagar lake in Hyderabad drained by an urban catchment is experiencing the problem of water quality degradation and efforts are made in this paper to assess the impact of the restoration measures taken to control water quality degradation. Results indicate the sewage treatment plant constructed reduced the inputs contributed by point sources, while the other measures taken on catchment scale are also effective in reducing the pollutant load. Mass balance approach is used to assess the inputs and improvements in water quality of the lake.