Water Pollution: The Hennops River

1800 Words8 Pages
The Hennops River is located in the province of Gauteng between Johannesburg and Pretoria and forms part of the Crocodile River basin. The river has many tributaries leading from urban and rural areas that flow into the river. (Nawn, R. 2014.) The province of Gauteng is seen as the economic powerhouse of South Africa and has many industrial areas due to manufacturing goods and mining. The Hennops river passes through the industrial area of Centurion, because the river passes through many rural and urban settlements and due to the high industrialisation of Gauteng the Hennops river has become increasingly polluted. This is because of the settlements and their functions surrounding the river. One can conclude that urban settlements because of…show more content…
2015.) People have polluted for thousands of years but never at the rate that we do today. A big section of pollution is the pollution of water bodies and in particular rivers. Water pollution can be in many forms and they all have different effects but all of the effects are detrimental to living organisms. Water pollution can be caused by natural occurrences but the main cause of water pollution is man-made. Biological water pollution is when water borne diseases multiply in a body of water. This can be diseases like cholera, typhoid and bilharzia. This occurs when communities have poor sanitation around the body of water. These diseases cause pain and in serious cases…show more content…
One must take samples from the river. To test the pH one would add a chemical indicator, The Universal indicator, to the sample and compare the colour change of the two to what a healthy water body’s pH should be. One can look at the ecosystems surrounding the water body to determine the health, these are biological indicators. If there a wide variety of organisms which are healthy the river will be cleaner than if there were only a small variety of organisms. One can look for litter in a river, the more litter the worse the condition. One can take samples of water in the rural settlement and in the urban settlement. To test the purity of the water one can boil the water and measure the temperature to which the water boils, the closer it is to 100 degrees Celsius the more pure it is. The clarity test can also be used, one can look at the water samples and see if there is a lot of particles in the water, the less particles the healthier the water. These are ways to test how clean the water is.(The water project.

    More about Water Pollution: The Hennops River

      Open Document