IGUA –Water Quality Environmental Management Index: proposal of an index to evaluate the water quality used in the supply of Porto Velho

Abstract

Water is essential to life and its management imposes a balance between the imperatives of their protection and the necessities of order economic, health and social. For public supply, how much the better the quality of the water collected, the lower the demand for technologies for their treatment and, consequently, lower the investments. The environmental management of the watershed influences the quality of your water. There are several indices used for the calculation of water quality, however, use sample collection of water and analysis in laboratories, making it unfeasible for the great most municipalities in the interior of the North region, which do not have availability of these resources at their headquarters. Thus, the proposed model of the IGUA – Water Quality Environmental Management Index environmental management indicators to the quality of the water collected for the public supply, based on the DPSIR conceptual framework, proposed by the European Environment Agency in 1999, using 14 indicators, unlike the water quality indices widely used in literature. Porto Velho, capital of the state of Rondônia, located in Brazilian Amazon, was used as a case study for the application of the IGUA proposal. The current IGUA was calculated and three projected future scenarios to assess the quality of water abstracted for the public supply of Porto Velho. The result was that, with a trend scenario, water quality would deteriorate, demonstrating that the IGUA can be used as an optional environmental management tool to planning and decision making.