Open AccessAssessment of groundwater quality of two selected villages of Nawada district of Bihar using water quality index
Author(s) -
Mukesh Ruhela,
Vikas Kumar Singh,
Faheem Ahamad
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
environment conservation journal/environment conservation journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2278-5124
pISSN - 0972-3099
DOI - 10.36953/ecj.2021.22344
Subject(s) - fluoride , alkalinity , total dissolved solids , water quality , groundwater , effluent , environmental science , biochemical oxygen demand , sewage , environmental chemistry , fertilizer , chloride , environmental engineering , chemistry , toxicology , wastewater , chemical oxygen demand , geology , ecology , inorganic chemistry , geotechnical engineering , organic chemistry , biology
Unplanned discarding of industrial effluent, sewage, domestic and industrial solid waste, unwise use of insecticides, herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer in agriculture are the major causes of groundwater quality reduction. In the present paper groundwater quality of the two selected village of Rajauli subdivision of Nawada district of Bihar was assessed using water quality index (WQI). The samples were figured out for the parameters such as temperature, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), alkalinity, dissolved oxygen (DO), total hardness (TH), chloride, calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and fluoride. All the parameters were found below the standard limits of Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS, 2012) except total hardness (328.1mg/l to 346.6mg/l), calcium (105.3mg/l to 122.6mg/l), magnesium (46.1mg/l to 55.7mg/l) and fluoride (4.8 to 4.9mg/l). Fluoride was observed more than 3 times than the standard permissible limit (1.5mg/l). Water quality index (WQI) was also applied on the obtained data to make it easy to understand. Based on WQI (including the fluoride), all the four sites fall in unfit for drinking category (250.79, 258.78, 281.78, 247.30) and in poor to very poor category (80.23, 88.19, 88.59, 64.60) excluding the fluoride from WQI calculation. Both the values of WQI shows that fluoride alone is not responsible for the degraded quality of water but other high concentration of salts is also responsible.