Does Embankment Improve Quality of a River? A Case Study in To Lich River Inner City Hanoi, with Special Reference to Heavy Metals

Abstract

To Lich River (TLR) system receives wastewaters from a population of nearly two million people and 100 manufacto- ries of five industrial zones in inner city Hanoi, Vietnam. To improve quality of TLR, the embankment was carried out in 1998 and finished in 2002, resulted in width of 20 - 45 m, depth of 2 - 4 m, and maximum water flow capacity of 30 m3/s. Water and sediment quality indices based on heavy metal concentrations were used to evaluate current river en- vironment compared to that of pre-embankment. Mass balance model was employed to estimate total metal loads for specific river reaches, which corresponds to various types of wastewater discharged along the river. The results indi-cated that currently there is about 284,000 m3 sediment accumulated in TLR bed, which is under high contamination of Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni Cu, Zn, As, Cd, and Pb with a total of 7347 tons of all concerned metals. Domestic-discharged river reaches received much lower metal loads, roughly 8% - 28% compared to river reaches of both domestic and industrial inputs. Total load of all nine concerned metals at the end of TLR is 161.7 kg/day, which is finally discharged to Nhue River at South Hanoi. Water quality was improved much right after finishing embankment, then it gradually deterio-rated. Meanwhile, sediment quality became even much worse after embankment. Relative river quality index as equal weight for both water and sediment quality indices indicated that quality of TLR was not much improved after the em-bankment. It even became worse due to the urbanization in recent years.