Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

ASSESSMENT OF THERMAL POWER STATION’S EFFLUENT ON HETEROTROPHIC PLATE COUNTS AND TOTAL COLIFORM IN KOTA BERRAGE LAKE, RAJASTHAN INDIA

Parveen Kumar, Manju Rawat Ranjan, Ashutosh Tripathi2 and S. Balachandran

Abstract

This study examined the assessment of thermal effluents from power plant on Heterotrophic plate Counts and Coli form bacteria of Kota barrage lake, Rajasthan. Kota Barrage Lake is an artificial water reservoir in Kota city. This lake is the main source of drinking water in Kota city. In the current study, Total bacterial counts and Total Coli forms were analysed in 54 samples. These samples have been collected from different locations, i.e. upstream, midstream and downstream sampling stations in the study area during every month of winter and summer season, i.e. Oct 2015-Feb 2016 and March-June 2016 respectively. In downstream total bacterial counts and total coli form increased by 32.86 % and 22.46 % respectively. Results of Heterotrophic plate Counts and Total Coli form analysis show that Kota Barrage Lake is contaminated with bacteria and bacterial counts are increasing due to thermal effluents from power plant. On statistical analysis, one way ANOVA test show that Kota Barrage Lake has been affected by the effluent from thermal power plant. On calculating the analysis of variation (ANOVA) of Total Bacterial Counts or HPC and Total coli form it was concluded at 5% level of significance, samples had come from populations having the same mean but the value of ‘F’ was found very close to standard value of ‘F’ so it has potential to exceed the standard value slowly with time. Total coli form has correlated with total bacterial counts positively (R2=0.57) in study period. Occurrence of total bacterial counts during the summer exceeds the winter values by 34.19% and total coli form during summer also exceeds the winter values by 14.97%. The impact of thermal effluent was more dominated over HPC than Total Coli form.