Abstract
Abstract The determination of the total amount of water pollutant emission in different regions is a difficult problem faced by managers and researchers. Previous studies mostly focused on operability and fairness with little attention paid to local water quality. In order to make total emission pollutant control (TEPC) truly serve the improvement of water quality, a water total emission pollutant allocation model was built based on water environmental carrying capacity (WECC) in this paper. This model was used to construct a water pollutant emission control allocation scheme for 28 cities in Henan Province, China. The results showed that the chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction rates for these cities ranged from 16.8 to 38.6% and ammonia-nitrogen (NH3-N) reduction rates ranged from 5.7 to 43.5% in 2020, which were different from the previous targets for these cities without considering their current status of water quality. The largest COD reduction rates for different types of point sources (industrial, urban, and large-scale livestock sources) were 35.4%, 39.0%, and 38.0%, respectively, and the largest NH3-N reduction rates were 62.2%, 42.5%, and 43.5%, respectively. This study solves the problem of long-term disconnection between TEPC and water quality improvement in China. The results can also be applied to implement the TEPC to improve water quality in other regions with a similar problem.
Highlights
Water environmental pollution is a common concern all over the world caused by a large amount of wastewater emissions with urban and industrial development (Xia et al, 2012; Sun et al, 2015; Song et al, 2018)
The status of Zones 21 and 4 was different, with the Water environmental carrying capacity (WECC) of chemical oxygen demand (COD) being higher than the WECC of NH3-N in Zone 21
An optimal allocation model based on WECC was developed for COD and NH3-N load allocation from different types of pollution sources
Summary
Water environmental pollution is a common concern all over the world caused by a large amount of wastewater emissions with urban and industrial development (Xia et al, 2012; Sun et al, 2015; Song et al, 2018). Total emission pollutant control (TEPC) is a commonly used water environment management strategy aiming to improve water quality by controlling a total load of water pollutants within the range of a given WECC, which is one of the major environmental policies implemented in China to control water pollution (Hu et al, 2018). The implementation of TEPC mainly focused on the control of point source pollution, including industrial, urban, and large-scale livestock sources. It was initially piloted in 1988 and was extended nationwide in 1996 with a goal of 10% reduction of targeted pollutants over 5 years. Compared with 2010, the water quality of classes I–III and IV–V in 2015 increased by 4.6% and 3%, respectively, while the water quality worse than class V decreased by 7.6%, whose water qualities were seriously polluted and did not have the function of production water supply (MEPC, 2002, 2016)
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