Recycling of wastewater through sewage-fed aquaculture in the peri-urban Kolkata of West Bengal, India

3^rd International Conference on Hydrology & Meteorology

September 15-16, 2014 Hyderabad International Convention Centre, India

Joydev Maity

Accepted Abstracts: Hydrol Current Res

Abstract :

Water scarcity and water pollution are crucial issues in today?s world. One of the ways to reduce the impact of water scarcity and pollution is to expand water and wastewater reuse. The use of aquaculture for the purpose of wastewater treatment to improve the quality of sewage effluent prior to its release to the land and or any aquatic body has been practiced for a relatively short time. Since household wastewater often intermixes with effluents from industries and agricultural runoff, multidimensional approaches have been made towards maximizing protein production through rational exploitation of available resources. Sewage-fed aquaculture is a unique system and has manifold advantages in developing tropical countries acting as a major source of nutrients for crop farming and aquaculture, economical for sustainable production and helps to combat environmental pollution. The current study is on East Calcutta Wetland (ECW) which is a model for multi-use resource recovery system with activities like aquaculture and agriculture. The entire city?s soluble waste is disposed into the raw sewage canals which finally drains into the shallow, flat bottom fish ponds called Bheri. These sewage fed fisheries act simultaneously for the purification process like removal of heavy metals, coliform reduction as well as fish production at a commercial scale. Mainly three types of commonly consumed fishes were chosen for the study namely Labeo rohita, Catla catla and Cirrhinus mrigala. Little scientific and technical attention may help to improve the water quality and in the same time use of economic benefit and uplift the socio-economic status.