Impacts of sedimentation on rainwater quality: case study at Ikorodu of Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of sedimentation on rainwater storage system using a case study at the Ikorodu area of Lagos state, a rural area in Nigeria. In this investigation, the proportions of Escherichia coli (E. coli) that were settleable (due to sedimentation) and those that were at the free phase have been studied. Water samples were collected from different depths in the inspected rainwater storage tank at two different periods (i.e. rainy and dry periods) for 20 days. The samples collected from these periods have been analysed for physical and microbial measures before passing it through the serial filters with pore sizes of 500 μm, 100 μm, 10 μm and 1.5 μm to measure the retained particle mass. From the results, it was observed that: (1) the water quality at the free-phase zone was better than that at the tank’s bottom; (2) the settleable bacteria rapidly sinked to bottom; (3) the correlation of turbidity, E. coli and total suspended solids (TSS) for all the rain events showed a relatively high Pearson’s coefficient of 0.9 to one another; and (4) over 70% of settling TSS occurred within first 36 hours. Finally, it has been found that the physical sedimentation process can significantly reduce the microbial measures.