Assessment of Water Quality of Bayelsa Rivers Using Pollution Index

Water quality of Bayelsa Rivers was evaluated using pollution index (PI). Water collected from four stations along Brass River was studied. Water quality status was analysed with reference to World Health Organization (WHO) standard for domestic water supply for water quality and department of petroleum resources permissible levels for produced water discharge. The results obtained where then used for pollution index (PI) computation. A pollution index above one (PI>1) indicates that the water source is unacceptable for the particular use. The river water quality parameters comply to a large extent with most of the set standard. However, it was very notable very poor at station A and D in terms of chloride (Cl-), implying that the river Brass and Oloibiri at the points investigated could be chemically unsafe for human consumption as high chloride indicates high chemical activity and possibly anthropogenic pollutant. The pollution index along the rivers Brass, Ewoama, Okoroma, and Oloibiri were 3.53, 2.19, 2.74, 2.88 in terms of numeric value and 2.85, 2.17, 2.41 and 2.55 in terms of relative damage due to pollution respectively. The result revealed that the pollution at Brass was higher than that upstream at oloibiri possibly due to waste inputs from the oil servicing companies. The index declined downstream from Ewoama as the river recovers. This does not imply that no further pollutants were introduced into the rivers as it flows downstream through these locations but rather the level of pollution was within the assimilative capacity of the river.