Abstract
The ongoing degradation of the water quality of central Maharashtra’s basaltic aquifer is of great concern for different authorities and agencies involved in the water sector in the Maharashtra, India. The Kham river, which is one of the major tributaries of the Godavari river, receives all domestic and industrial waste water from the Aurangabad city. The river, with no natural flow in the dry season, is extensively used for irrigation. In order to evaluate the quality of river and groundwater in the study area, eight river water and forty groundwater samples along right and left bank of the Kham river were collected and analyzed for various parameters. Physical and chemical parameters of the river and groundwater such as pH, TDS, EC, SO4, NO3 and heavy metals like Pb, Cr, Cd, Zn, and Cu were determined. The results show that the river and groundwater of the area is generally unfit for domestic uses. Most of the physico-chemical parameters and heavy metals in the river and groundwater samples have higher value than the World Health Organization (WHO, 2006) and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS, 2003) guidelines.
Highlights
Water is very important life supporting material and required for all biotic communities
Analysis of water resources The physico-chemical parameters investigated are pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), sulphate, and nitrate was measured in the laboratory immediately after the arrival of the samples according to standard methods
Groundwater water quality mapping The following parameters were recorded at the site of collection; name of sample; zone and time and date of collection, place of the collection using Garmin instrument to record latitude and longitude of sampling wells in study area (Table 3)
Summary
Water is very important life supporting material and required for all biotic communities. We depend on water for domestic, irrigation, sanitation and industrial purposes. The impairment of water quality due to the introduction of pollutant is a problem of industrial cities around the world[3,6]. Heavy metal is major pollutant in water bodies because of industrial and municipal waste discharge into the environment without proper treatment[7,4,6]. Heavy metals in groundwater are toxic even at low concentrations. Heavy metals become toxic when they are not metabolized by the body and accumulate in the soft tissues. Heavy metals may enter the human body via food, water, air, or absorption through the skin in agriculture, industrial. In recent past many researchers have worked on water quality for different purposes[36,9,24]
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