Assessment of water quality under national highway expansion activity in Himachal Pradesh

Abstract

Water is one of the precious natural resource and is essential for the survival of living organisms. However due to developmental activities its quality is deteriorating and has now become a major environmental challenge. Therefore a study was conducted to assess the spatial and temporal variation in surface and ground water quality of the sources falling around national highway. In order to conduct the study water sources falling within distance 0-500 m and greater than 500 m from the expansion activities and seasonal effect during pre-monsoon, monsoon and post monsoon months were considered. The parameters selected were pH, EC, turbidity, TDS, BOD, COD, Cl─ and NO3─. The results revealed that all the parameters were observed to be significant with spatial and temporal variation for surface and ground water sources near the highway expansion activities. However, all the water parameters were within permissible limits as prescribed by ICMR, except for COD which ranged from 16.31-22.69 mg l-1 and 12.82-16.87 mg l-1 for surface and ground water sources. The highest value of 20.30 mg l-1 was observed within 0-500 m distance in surface water which was significantly higher than the prescribed value. Also, seasonal effect on water properties was observed significant, especially in premonsoon as compared to monsoon and post monsoon. Therefore study concluded that highway expansion activities had started impacting the surface and ground water quality. Henceforth, further surveillance for quality assessment of water sources near highway activities is need of the hour.