ANNOUNCEMENTS
India is facing daunting pressure in attaining drinking water security. Population dynamics together with expanding urban agglomeration because of migration of rural population to the urban areas and socio-economic development is one of the reasons of such mismatch in attaining drinking water security particularly in urban and per-urban areas. Deteriorating water quality of both surface and ground water mainly because of contamination from anthropogenic and geogenic sources together with other impinging issues viz., rising demands, conflict in interest of usages of water, etc. is other issue which make the conventional treatment schemes either expensive or unsustainable in terms of ensuring quantity. These calls for innovative technologies, which are cost effective, sustainable, require less skills to operate, less O & M cost, hazard free, etc.
Riverbank Filtration (RBF) or simply, Bank Filtration (BF) is a natural treatment technology being used in many European countries and USA for more than a century to provide drinking water to the settlements along the riverbank. RBF is a process by which surface water from river, channel and lake is induced by pumping from nearby production wells to flow through the natural porous media (aquifer) before finally mixing with local groundwater in the land side and being abstracted for direct use or further treatment. The porous media serves as a natural filter and reduces the amount of suspended solids and pathogens. RBF technique is also gaining popularity in India because it has very good potential rivers having alluvial plain to adopt as RBF schemes.
Keeping the above in view, in the present dissertation work, the proposed RBF schemes of the National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee at Agra and Mathura in Uttar Pradesh have been considered for study and detailed analysis. The objectives of the study are focused to carry out a detailed investigation of both the sites to examine scope and feasibility of RBF scheme in the selected areas by studying the geological and topographical features, physico-chemical analysis of the water and soils and also by carrying out a numerical modeling of the river-aquifer and well field interactions of the proposed RBF sites using MODFLOW. Both the RBF sites are located along the right bank of the Yamuna River and have the problem of drinking water because of intrinsic groundwater salinity problem, deteriorating water quality of the Yamuna River, etc. A comprehensive analysis of geological and topographical features, physico-chemical parameters of groundwater and soils samples together with the results of the numerical modeling of the river-aquifer and well field interactions of the proposed RBF sites has been presented in this dissertation.
Keywords: Field investigation, Riverbank Filtration, Physico-chemical analysis, MODFLOW, Agra, Mathura.
