Drinking Water Quality

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

Water is an important natural resource needed for national development and human health. This shows that a nation and its development depends on the availability of water in one way or the other. However, when the available water becomes contaminated it cause more harm than good. In recent times, the change in climatic condition has affected the surface water by causing a lot of small water bodies to dry up and most of the remaining ones are highly contaminated by both natural and anthropogenic activities. This has cause many challenges in different parts of the world especially in developing countries. This has brought a high demand on groundwater as the main source of water supply for drinking,

One major advantage of applying GIS in research is the ability to bridge the communication gap between researchers and entire communities (Twigg, 1990; Goodchild, 2000). For example, Aral and Maslia (1996) applied GIS in the analysis of the human exposure to contaminated drinking water and they could estimate the extent of contamination and locations of exposed population through GIS tools.

Access to basic social services such as water and sanitation are some of the basic development challenges facing most developing countries across the world, (GRZ, 2007). In Ghana, monitoring of groundwater quality is not part of groundwater supply program. It has not received immense attention even though most of the rural communities depend on groundwater for drinking, domestic and irrigation purposes. Also, there is a high rate of population growth rate of 4% annually in the Afigya Kwabre district (Ghana statistical service 2010) and increase in agriculture activities, and urban development in the district. The domestic sewage factories effluents and agriculture waste can lead to deterioration of ground water quality. Over the years, Ghana has experienced water related epidemics such as cholera and dysentery due to contaminated water. A typical challenge in the affected areas is the poor sanitation

To understand how the geology and anthropogenic activities affect the groundwater quality.

IV. To identify groundwater contaminants if any and their possible sources.

V. To generate Groundwater Quality Index Map for the whole district.

1.4 SCOPE OF WORK

The research comprises of three major sections as shown below.

(i). Pre-Fieldwork: This involve problem definition, literature review on groundwater quality, physical, chemical, Bacteriological parameters of water, WHO standards for drinking water, searching and collection of literature on water quality from libraries and the internet. There was a literature review to document and understand previous studies on groundwater quality assessment.

(ii) Fieldwork: This stage was comprise of collection of groundwater samples and measuring of Temperature, Electrical conductivity, TDS and pH. Selected boreholes were sampled base on literature review.

(iii) Post-Fieldwork: This stage involved measuring of Physical, chemical and bacteriological parameters in the Laboratory. Data processing, results analysis, presentation, and thesis writing.

1.5 HYPOTHESIS

If the population growth rate and agricultural activities increase are not properly manage then they negatively affect groundwater