Assessment of the efficacy and impacts of Agrochemicaland Food Company Ltd’s waste water treatment plant on the quality of water in the river Nyando, Kenya.

Abstract

Water quality management is one of the most challenging issues as the industrialization; urbanization and human population continue to grow globally.Large quantities of unmanaged wastewater (WW) from the industries and various municipalities find their ways into the water bodies and can have adverse effects on both public and ecosystem health.Efforts to assess the levels of pollution in water bodies through water quality assessment are therefore needed in order to create awareness to the concerned authorities so that necessary corrective measures can be undertaken. In this work, water quality assessment survey was carried out along the river Nyando in relation to the WW discharged from Muhoroni Agrochemical and food company (ACFC) Ltd over a period running from October 2015 to August 2016. Samples were collected five times from the sampling points labeled 1-5 during the entire period of study. The samples were then analyzed for selected physico-chemical parametersusing standard analytical methods. The results showed that there were variations in the values of physico-chemical parameters between the sampling points 4 and 5 located along the river. The study also showed that the entire WWTP was very efficient in CODand BOD5with removal efficiencies of 92.47% and 97.26% respectivel