Modelling of nonpoint source pollution in the Kuils River catchment, Western Cape - South Africa

Abstract

The Kuils River Catchment is an urban river catchment that forms part of the larger Kuils-Eerste River system draining the eastern half of the Cape Metropolitan Authority area and Stellenbosch Municipality. Rapid urbanisation has resulted in the encroachment of residential and industrial areas into the river system through channelization and sewage disposal. This research project intends to assess the quality of surface runoff in the Kuils River catchment and determining non-point source pollutant loading rates in the catchment using GIS-based modelling. The study results show how modelled potential sources of surface runoff and NPS pollutants using desktop GIS analysis tools in a sequential process that involved different levels of software applications could explain the characteristics of the catchment. With the help of the Expected Mean Concentration (EMC) values associated with surface runoff from land use/covers, NPS pollutant loads were assessed downstream towards the Kuils River Catchment outlet using the Nonpoint Source Pollution and Erosion Comparison Tool (N-SPECT) based in ArcGIS. The outputs from this model consist of predicted annual pollutant loading (mg/mvyear) for each Kuils-Eerste River that occurs in the catchment. The results have shown clearly the spatial distribution of sources of particular pollutants in the catchment. Further or advanced processing knowhow with this model might provide far reaching insights into the problem and it is however recommended that these results produced using N-SPECT be compared to those of other hydrologic models using the same inputs.