Toxic mix: Groundwater may pump you with sickness in Ahmedabad

AHMEDABAD: Your residential society should think twice before it mixes groundwater with municipal water in its sump. Thirty-three villages surrounding Ahmedabad city have received letters from Gujarat Water Supply and Sewerage Board, which warn them to stop drawing water from their borewells. All water samples tested for 15 parameters were deemed "unfit" for consumption. The parameters measured were not total dissolved salts and hardness alone, but also chloride, nitrate, fluoride, alkalinity and pH levels. The samples were taken on various days of July.
In Kumarkhan village, fluoride and sulphate levels were found to be 2.26 milligram per litre (mg/l) and 681 mg/l while the permissible limits are 1.5 mg/l and 400 mg/l. Similarly, water samples from Abasana village had high total dissolved salts, at 8,094 mg/l, while the permissible limit is 2,000 mg/l. The level of chloride in the groundwater in this village was 4,868 mg/l while the permissible limit is 1,000 mg/l.

Every day, the AMC supplies 1,369 million litres of drinking water to roughly 72 lakh citizens. But daily, the municipal corporation receives 1,739 million litres of sewage at its treatment plants! The difference indicates that Amdavadis draw 370 million litres of extra water from the ground every day. "The fact that all 32 samples have been declared unfit should ring alarm bells for citizens," said Prafull Mehta, a farmer who had filed an RTI query on the groundwater status report.