Assessment of groundwater quality in Tirupur region

Abstract

In recent years distressing environmental issues such as hazardous waste, global climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, groundwater contamination, disaster mitigation and removal of pollutant have become the focus of environmental attention. The study area is characterized by an undulating terrain with the height ranging between 290 and 322 meters above the Mean Sea Level (MSL) covering 450.25 square kilometers. The study area is extracted from toposheet No.58 E/4 and 58 E/8 and data extracted from IRS 1D 23.5m resolution with the help of Earth Resource Data Analyzing System (ERDAS) and Arc View GIS 3.2a software. Tirupur is one of the most important textile industrial cities and a newly formed corporation in Tamil Nadu. The quality of groundwater in Tirupur regions has been deteriorating rapidly during the last decade. To observe water level studies with reference to rainfall, year wise average groundwater levels for the selected bore well locations within the study area are furnished for a period of 12 years (1996-2007). For assessing the quality of groundwater, water samples from the study area were collected and analyzed for physicochemical parameters. The results of the water quality parameters were compared with the standards given by ISI (1983) and WHO (1993). Besides, a spatial variation map of various water quality parameters has been prepared using GIS. Also, seasonal variation graphs for the water quality parameters were prepared. The results reveal that the groundwater chemistry in the study area is affected by textile industrial activities in the aquifer in the upstream side and down stream side of the Noyyal river course and Tirupur municipal area is influenced by intrusion of polluted river water. The overall assessment of groundwater quality is recorded under Very Poor category. Also the groundwater flow and quality modeling using MODFDLOW evaluated under five different scenarios which predicts the water quality for the next ten years. newline