Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

Recently, the deterioration of water quality in Wonju stream has been reported due to the increase in diverse pollution sources along with community development and urbanization. Various types of attempts with a huge budget were made for better water quality so far, but its effectiveness is still doubted. In order to establish site-oriented measures for water quality improvement, the topographic and hydrologic factors were evaluated based on site inspection and survey. As the major streams merged into the Wonju stream, the Hwa and Heungyang streams were found to have higher pollution loads and contributions compared to other streams due to the scattered livestock farms and industries, and vulnerable land use. Notably, the discharge water from the Wonju Public Sewage Treatment Plant had the highest level of pollution load, impacting on the water quality of Wonju Stream. According to the SWAT model as water quality measures, the improvement effect of water quality in this treatment plant can be reached to the reductions in BOD 11.06%, T-N 23.56%, T-P 10.60% when the proper managements applied, whereas the improvement of water quality would be 3.89%, 1.23%, and 3.32% for BOD, T-N, T-P, respectively, for the industries. The reduction of the livestock industry was generally very high as a pollution source, but it was not much higher at the end of Wonju Stream than other measures. These results recommended that the water quality improvement measures should be designated for each upper-middle-lower section in Wonju stream.