Environmental impacts of urban sewage irrigation

Abstract

Increasing population growth and industrialisation in the last decades have caused a considerable rise in wastewater generation worldwide A common practice to cope with large volume of wastewater is to discharge into surface water bodies untreated However the need to preserve existing water resources has led to a re evaluation of this practice focusing on more environmentally sound methods Various studies have shown that land application of treated municipal wastewater as water and or nutrient source for agricultural crop production can represent a sustainable alternative The main objective of this study is to understand the environmental impacts of urban sewage irrigation and to predict the contaminate movement for different management strategies The study area selected is Madurai Tamil Nadu one of the ancient cities of India