Assessment of water quality of Balukhali stream at Chittagong university campus through weighted arithmetic water quality index

Bangladesh is blessed with many lentic and lotic water bodies. The present study was conducted to find out the condition of the water quality of the Balukhali stream of Chittagong University Campus (CUC) using the Weighted Arithmetic Water Quality Index (WAWQI). In this regard water samples were collected for one year period during January 2018 to December 2018 from two zones, the riffle zone and the pool zone of the mentioned stream. Water samples were analyzed using standard techniques of APHA to determine the seven physical [Temperature, Strem depth, Turbidity, Water velocity, Stream width, Conductivity and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)] and five chemical parameters [Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Free Carbon dioxide (freeCO₂), Calcium (Ca⁺⁺) and pH] out of which nine were used to evaluate the WQI values. The WQI values were 77.856 in the riffle zone and 80.137 in the pool zone which indicated that the water quality was very poor and can only be used for agricultural purposes.

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