Analyses of some selected physicochemical parameters of Hooghly river - A tributary of Ganga and influence of high and low tides

A study was conducted to assess the water quality of a 45 km stretch of river Hooghly by measuring various physicochemical parameters and an effort has been also taken to analyse the tidal impact on river. Nine sampling stations were selected for collecting the water samples, depending on location of point sources of discharging waste. The parameters included pH, turbidity, chloride, calcium, magnesium, total hardness, total suspended solid, total dissolved solid, chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and analyzed between May 2013 to April 2014. The statistical analysis was performed on all data in the present study using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), version 17. The results indicate that the quality of water varies considerably from location to location. All the parameters except pH have their significance factor less than 0.001 and hence can be concluded that they are significant. From the study, it might be concluded that scattered changes of parameters in different stations was due to intrusion of waste water at different points. The tidal influence on the water quality was also explained.