Road
runoffs were sampled from five highways and five urban roads located in the New
Juaben Municipality during the late storm events in the month of November 2014
and the early storm events in January 2015. A variety of water quality
parameters such as, pH, temperature, turbidity, electrical conductivity (EC),
total suspended solids (TSS), total dissolved solids (TDS), aqueous
concentrations of Chloride (Cl
-), Phosphate (
), Nitrate (
) and
Sulphate (
) ions as well as the total concentrations of some selected heavy
metals (Fe, Cu, Zn, Pb, Cd, Ni and Cr) were analysed for both periods. Although
the results for the studied parameters, particularly the heavy metals varied
for both sampling periods, the general trend indicated an increase in accumulation
from November 2014 to January 2015. This was attributed to vehicular deposition
as well as other natural and anthropogenic depositions on the road surfaces
during the antecedent dry weather period between the two sampling months. The
highest increase in pollutant loadings was associated with the heavy metals and
some physico-chemical parameters such as TSS, TDS, EC and turbidity. Generally,
EC, TDS, TSS and turbidity were above the permissible limits of the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of Ghana for both sampling periods.
However, almost all the mean concentrations of heavy metals recorded for both
road runoffs and the control samples were within the permissible limits of the
Ghana EPA with some few exceptions.