Identification of Major Risk Sources for Surface Water Pollution by Risk Indexes (RI) in the Multi-Provincial Boundary Region of the Taihu Basin, China.

Hong Yao,Weixin Li,Xin Qian

doi:10.3390/ijerph120810150

Abstract

Environmental safety in multi-district boundary regions has been one of the focuses in China and is mentioned many times in the Environmental Protection Act of 2014. Five types were categorized concerning the risk sources for surface water pollution in the multi-provincial boundary region of the Taihu basin: production enterprises, waste disposal sites, chemical storage sites, agricultural non-point sources and waterway transportations. Considering the hazard of risk sources, the purification property of environmental medium and the vulnerability of risk receptors, 52 specific attributes on the risk levels of each type of risk source were screened out. Continuous piecewise linear function model, expert consultation method and fuzzy integral model were used to calculate the integrated risk indexes (RI) to characterize the risk levels of pollution sources. In the studied area, 2716 pollution sources were characterized by RI values. There were 56 high-risk sources screened out as major risk sources, accounting for about 2% of the total. The numbers of sources with high-moderate, moderate, moderate-low and low pollution risk were 376, 1059, 101 and 1124, respectively, accounting for 14%, 38%, 5% and 41% of the total. The procedure proposed could be included in the integrated risk management systems of the multi-district boundary region of the Taihu basin. It could help decision makers to identify major risk sources in the risk prevention and reduction of surface water pollution.

Highlights

Over the last twenty years, with the rapid development of the economy, multi-district water pollution incidents have risen in China, arousing strong negative social repercussions [1,2,3].Environmental safety in multi-district regions has been one of the focuses in China and is mentioned many times in an environmental protection law promulgated in 2014 [4]
The aim of this study is to: (1) develop a quantitative risk characterization method for pollution sources of multi-district regions; (2) rank risk sources and identify major risk sources for surface water pollution in the multi-provincial boundary region of the Taihu basin, China; and (3) explore the contribution of various factors to pollution source risks, so that classification on source risk may be provided for decision makers to set priorities for allocating limited management resources in multi-district regions
Multiple attributes of the pollution sources were investigated and information on hydrological parameters and water qualities in the rivers of the provincial boundary region of the Taihu basin were monitored in situ

Summary

Introduction

Over the last twenty years, with the rapid development of the economy, multi-district water pollution incidents have risen in China, arousing strong negative social repercussions [1,2,3].Environmental safety in multi-district regions has been one of the focuses in China and is mentioned many times in an environmental protection law promulgated in 2014 [4]. Over the last twenty years, with the rapid development of the economy, multi-district water pollution incidents have risen in China, arousing strong negative social repercussions [1,2,3]. In the multi-provincial boundary region of the basin, the intensity of economic activities is much greater than other regions and there are a number of national and provincial concentrated industrial zones causing larger pollutant loads [7,8,9]. This multi-district region is sensitive to environmental pollution and there are several intakes of drinking water suppliers and habitat conservation areas. Implementation was far from successful because of the uncertainty of the compensation standard [11]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion