Mamta Singh^1,, Sandra West²

The principal recent change in rural land-use in the south east valley is that rural areas are being absorbed into growing towns and cities. This conversion of rural into urban land has several impacts on river water quality because of developments such as industrial installations, which are located along the banks of environmentally vulnerable rivers. The NakkhuKhola, which is one of tributaries of the River Bagmati flowing through the heart of Kathmandu valley was studied. It was found that the highest percentage of agricultural land was in the up-stream station, which was not yet influenced by industrial pollution. Less agricultural land existed in the mid-stream station, which was a newly formed urban area with domestic and industrial effluents as a major source of river pollution and the down-stream station experienced moderate load of pollutants from domestic and industrial effluents. The socio-economic condition of the local communities a social survey was conducted among the residents of the three sampling sites viz. up, mid and down-stream and respondents sex, age and education level were considered as their characteristics. The results suggested that none of the communities were dependent upon the river as a drinking water source, although the river was used for various other purposes such as irrigation, water and bathing of livestock, industrial use, waste disposal site, pebbles collection, fishing. The results further suggested that although people were aware of pollution, their awareness was not yet transferred into action, which was mainly because of lack of regulation, planning, monitoring, and implementation of environmental policy.

land-use, river pollution, socio-economic, Kathmandu, Nepal