Investigation of Ground Water Quality of Upstream Water Tanks in Coimbatore Using GIS: A Review

Abstract

Coimbatore city, the head quarters of Coimbatore District is located on the bank of Noyyal River in Tamil Nadu state. It lies between 10 ° 13’ N and 11 ° 23’ N latitudes and 76 ° 39’ E and 77 ° 30’ E longitudes with a total geographical area of about 7469 km2.Water is the basic element of social and economic infrastructure and is essential for a healthy society and sustainable development .Coimbatore is one of the major developing citiesin India .Ground water is being the favourite alternative to water provided through taps,is facing threats due to anthropogenic activities in India, which has led to deterioration of ground water quality. In addition to the source contamination,urbanization and improper disposal of solid wastes lead to contamination of groundwater and surface water resources in this region. Municipal and industrial wastes of the city are presently disposed at four distinct open tanks namely Narasampathy, Krishnampathy, Selvampathyand Kumaraswamy/(muthannankulam) tanks. The leaches of these wastes directly contaminate the groundwater and surface water resources leading unsuitability of water for drinking at many places. Hence, a detailed study has been carried out using Geographical Information System (GIS) to understand the spatial variation of surface water and groundwater quality. About sixteen groundwater samples and sixteen surface water samples are to be collected during monsoon and post monsoon periods of the year – 2014& 2015 from the study region, and the samples have to be analyzed for various physical and chemical parameters such as pH, Electrical Conductivity, Total Dissolved Solids, Alkalinity,Hardness, Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+, Cl•, HCO3•, CO32•, SO4, NO3 and F. The concentrations of physical and chemical constituents inthe water samples are going to compared with the Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) and World Health Organization (WHO) standard to know the suitability of water for drinking.The study indicates that the water quality parameters exceed the permissible limits fordrinking at many locations leading the water unsuitable for drinking. The spatial variation of groundwater quality parameters is also yet to be plotted using GIS.