Assessment of Groundwater Quality in Hoskote Taluk, Bangalore Rural District, Karnataka, India

Abstract

In nature the quality of groundwater is determined by quantum of water, natural recharge, chemical composition of the soil cover and its thickness, mineralogical makeup of the aquifer, residence time of the water which is governed by the transmissivity of the formation. The two important characteristics of the crystalline terrain, which covers practically the entire taluk, is in the heterogeneity and preferred flow paths. They have a dominant role to play in determining the quality of the ground water with the result; large variations are noticed in short distances. Thus it is not uncommon to get varied quality of water even in small villages. This fact is to be borne in mind while collecting sources of water supply for various uses. Water quality data in respect of various parameters of all the drinking water sources in the 26 village bore wells has been collected, analysed and presented in Table 1. Physico-chemical characters of groundwater is given table 2. Table 3 summarizes the number of wells with a quality problem in the study area. As seen the most commonly observed problems relate to the Total dissolved solids, Total hardness, Turbidity, Calcium, Iron and Fluoride. The strategy to be adopted in providing solutions to these villages is discussed.