Assessment of River and Groundwater Quality and its Suitability for Domestic Uses in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India

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.