Surface Water Pollution Indicators and Their Use for Water Resources Quality Assessment in the Perm Region

Abstract

The purpose is to identify indicators of surface water pollution to assess the quality of water resources in the Perm region. Materials and methods. The research materials included draft standards for permissible discharge of substances and microorganisms into water bodies (VAT) provided by the enterprise, data on average annual and minimum concentrations of pollutants in the water of the Kama River and the Kama Reservoir (2016-2021), provided by the Perm Center for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring – branch of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Ural UGMS", information on water intake from surface sources according to the statistical reporting form 2-TP Vodkhoz "Information on water use" (2017-2020), provided by the Kama Basin Water Administration (BVU). Results and discussion. As indicators characterizing water quality, the water pollution indicator (Iload), which characterizes the change in the concentrations of the analyzed elements relative to the background, and the water pollution indicator, which characterizes the change in the concentrations of the analyzed elements relative to the maximum permissible concentration, are proposed. Indicators of the volume of discharge of contaminated wastewater by an enterprise into surface water bodies (Isbr) and pollution (I*load) of surface waters are proposed. Comparison of the pollution indicator with the maximum permissible concentration allows one to assess the self-cleaning ability of a water body. Conclusion. The calculation showed that despite the fact that the values of the indicator of water pollution relative to the background are greater than 1 and indicate an increase in the concentrations of pollutants along the length of the section, the values of the indicator I*load do not exceed 1, except for the COD value in the Berezniki and Ust-Pozhva sections along average and maximum values of I*load for the observation period (2016-2021). The conclusion is made about the sufficiency of the self-cleaning capacity of the reservoir for diluting the incoming wastewater from the enterprises of the Bereznikovsk-Solikamsk industrial hub.