From Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Jan 13: The quality of groundwater in Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, and Jammu and Kashmir meets the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) compared to other states – some in the Northeast – which have widespread contamination, a report released recently by the Ministry of Jal Shakti shows.
Elevated arsenic levels were found in several states, particularly in the floodplains of the Ganga and Brahmaputra rivers, during the assessment. This includes regions of Assam, Manipur, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and the Rajnandgaon district in Chhattisgarh.
Few states and UTs such as Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Andaman & Nicobar, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Nagaland, Pondicherry, and Tripura fall within the “excellent category” as 100% of their water samples exhibited safe levels.
The Ministry’s report is in stark contrast to the report of the Meghalaya Food Testing Laboratory in October 2023 which stated that more than 95% of drinking water supplied to 46 localities of Shillong (except for Demthring and Mawblei) is harmful for consumption due to the presence of bacteria, high iron content and low pH value (acidic).
Some localities where the water was found to be unsafe include Oakland, Jail Road, Wahingdoh, Jaiaw Langsning, Lumdiengjri, Mawbah, Jhalupara, Dhankheti, Cleve Colony, Lumshyiap, Nongmensong, and Laitumkhrah.
In December 2023, the National Green Tribunal had issued a notice to the Meghalaya government highlighting the presence of arsenic and fluoride in the water supplied to people. The NGT observed that the presence of these metals or chemicals is “very serious” and requires “urgent preventive and protective steps”.
Details of Ministry report
Almost 20% of the samples exceeded the permissible limit for nitrate while 9% of the samples had fluoride levels above the acceptable limit. Arsenic contamination was found in 3.5% of the samples in many other states.
“This is particularly worrying because long-term exposure to both contaminants (fluoride and arsenic) can have severe health consequences, including fluorosis (for fluoride) and cancer or skin lesions (for arsenic),” the report said.
Fluoride concentration exceeding the permissible limit is a major concern in Rajasthan, Haryana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana.
“Although the monsoon season led to some improvement in fluoride levels in these states, the overall contamination levels remain alarmingly high,” the report said, attributing it primarily to agricultural run-off and overuse of fertilizers.
A notable concern in the report, based on quality data at 15,259 groundwater monitoring locations and focused assessment at 4,982 trend stations across the country in 2023, is the “elevated levels of uranium in several regions”. Rajasthan and Punjab are shown as regional hotspots of uranium contamination.
The samples with high uranium concentrations were clustered in areas identified as “over-exploited”, “critical”, and “semi-critical” groundwater stress zones, such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. The report also talks about Electrical Conductivity, which is a measure of the ease with which water conducts electricity.
It is actually the measure of mineralization of water and indicative of the degree of salinity of groundwater. It can tell how much dissolved substances, chemicals, and minerals are present in the water. Higher amounts of these impurities will lead to a higher conductivity.
Overall, the groundwater quality across India varies significantly, with states like Rajasthan, Haryana, and Andhra Pradesh facing widespread contamination from uranium, nitrate, fluoride, arsenic, and iron. Urgent concerns include health risks such as fluorosis and cancer due to elevated contamination levels in several regions, exacerbated by agricultural run-off and overuse of fertilizers.