SUITABILITY OF GANGA CANAL WATER FOR DRINKING PURPOSE AT HARIDWAR (UTTARAKHAND), INDIA
Nitin Kamboj and Ravinder Singh Aswal
Abstract
The lack of awareness and education among peoples coupled with poor legislations has resulted into deterioration of water sources and subsequently, their health related aspect. Water quality index (WQI) is an indicator of water quality, which reveals the composite influence of a number of water quality parameters and is useful in determining suitability of water for drinking purpose in easy and understandable way even by a common and non-scientific person. To assess the water quality of Ganga River at Goa Beach, Rishikesh as reference site and Ganga Canal at Bhimgoda Barrage (Haridwar), Premnagar Ashram (Haridwar), Pathari Power Plant (Bahadrabad), Rail Bridge (Roorkee) and Uttam Sugar Mill Ltd., Narsan (Uttarakhand), India as experimental sites for drinking purpose was carried out for a period of 6 months on monthly basis from Sep-2013 to Feb-2014 for 11 water quality parameters on average basis namely turbidity, pH, total hardness, alkalinity, chloride, total dissolved solids (TDS), calcium, magnesium, sulphate, nitrate and iron were considered in calculation of WQI by Weighted Arithmetic method. The calculated higher values of WQI indicated that water of Ganga River and Ganga Canal at none of the study site was found suitable for drinking purpose. These higher WQI values may be ascribed due to the higher concentrations of turbidity and iron parameters as per specified water quality rating.
Keywords: WQI, Water Quality Parameters, Ganga Canal, Rishikesh, Haridwar