Determination of background concentrations of hydrochemical parameters

and water quality assessment in the Akhuryan River Basin

The study area, Akhuryan River Basin, is located in the western part of Armenia. Karkachun
and Ashotsq are the largest tributaries of Akhuryan River based on geographical observation.
Agriculture is the leading livelihood activity near the Akhuryan river basin, all wastewater are
discharged directly into the river without proper treatment. Same thing happens to wastewaters that
come from other sources such as domestic and commercial. In the case study done in the Akhuryan
river, data were obtained from 8 sampling sites which include main flow of the river and the tributary
flow of Karkachun and Ashotsq.

In this study, the assessment of the quality of surface water includes the use of Maximum
Permissible Concentrations (MPCs). Data have been processed in former USSR in 1970s and
designed for the assessment of pollution in water systems used for fisheries purposes. In this
assessment, water quality is considered to be safe if MPCs are not exceeded. On the other hand,
calculation of Background Concentrations (BGCs) is done to get more reliable results for the
assessment of the water quality in Akhuryan river. Also BGCs indicates the amount of pollutants and
their pressure present in the river. The determination of background concentrations was carried out
using the function of log-normal probability distribution. Calculations were carried out on the basis of
hydrochemical monitoring data 2006-2010 and calculated percentile are in the range of 50 to 90%
with respect to original data sets.

By the application of the background concentrations the water quality parameters of the river
has been classified in a more convenient manner. According to the results, in the upstream of the
Akhuryan river the water quality corresponds to moderate and poor classes due to phosphates.
Turbulence is one of the main reason why the flowing water in the upper section has potential of self
purification. The quality of water worsens in the downstream section of the river due to the inflow of
untreated wastewater from domestic/municipal, and agricultural. At the same time water quality was
assessed using the MPCs. However list of pollutants detected by using MPCs is much different from
the list obtained from the classification based on background concentration and does not reflect the
actual pollution sources and types of pollutants. Some of the significant results that show the
drawback of using MPCs are the presence of nitrates and phosphates. The exceedance of these
substances from respective MPCs were not detected. But the increasing concentration based on BGCs
calculation were obvious.

As a conclusion, the background concentration based system is an effective way of assessing

the water quality of the Akhuryan river. It is a better way than using maximum permissible
concentrations. Using the BGCs in this study, the Akhuryan river downstream was characterized as
"bad" status and the main pollutant were nutrients.