Assessment of Drinking Water Quality At Public Amenities In Kota City

The only perennial river of Rajasthan is the Chambal River and it is the main source of drinking water for Kota city as well as the district. With the industrialization, urbanization, population increase and wastewater inflow into the river, the water quality of Chambal is getting deteriorated day by day. Looking to recent news articles in different newspapers regarding the deteriorating quality of drinking water at public places like Government hospitals and other places, we decided to carry out a study of drinking water quality at public amenities in Kota city so as to assess the quality of drinking water. To carry out the work, the whole city was divided into different zones and samples were collected from public sources such as bus stand, railway station, hospitals, some open sources and packaged water bottles available in the market for their further assessment in the laboratory. The samples were tested for physical, chemical and biological parameters namely pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), total alkalinity, total hardness (TH), Ca Hardness, Mg Hardness, dissolved Oxygen (DO), residual chlorine, chloride, nitrate, total coliforms and faecal coliforms..The results show that most of the physical, chemical, biological parameters of water are within the permissible limits prescribed by Indian Standards. However, some of the samples were found to be beyond the permissible limits and therefore, continuous monitoring of water quality needs to be assessed.