Assessment of underground irrigation water quality of Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Changing scenario with economic development of the society towards large-scale urbanization is leading to huge problems related to waste water disposal. While uncontrolled reuse has environmental implications on soil/ground water and human health but at the same time, the effluents do have high nutrient value and thus the potential for use as supplemental irrigation. Population growth with increasing urbanization and industrialization is encroaching upon the share of agriculture water and is leading to production of quantities of wastewaters, which are beyond the capacity of natural systems to assimilate. Soils are considered to be the ultimate and probably the most logical sink for these wastewaters especially in the land locked states where their disposal into surface streams is banned. Farmers in pri-urban areas depend largely on these waters for their livelihood and supply of majority of the N and P and also the organic matter for conditioning the soil. Estimates are that sewage waters can annually irrigate about 1.5 M-ha land area and has a potential to contribute about one-million tones of nutrients and 130 million man days of employment. Since the present sewage irrigation practices are primitive, unscientific and more of disposal oriented their use results in progressive and irreversible accumulation of salts, toxic materials and heavy metals in soil and ground water. Industrial effluents are more culprits than the domestic sewage. Health hazards from pathogenic contaminations further multiply the complexities from their use. The realization that both controlled and uncontrolled disposal of waste waters can contaminate soils, surface and ground waters and that bio-transfer of pathogens and heavy metals occurs through the chain: sewage-soil-vegetation-animal-human being, has led to the development of considerable assortment of regulatory measures and guidelines aimed at reducing or eliminating waste water related pollution. Conventional treatment technology to make effluent less risky is cost prohibitive and for a developing country like India, less costly methods based on biological and soil-aquifer treatment techniques are being advocated. Concerted efforts by researchers show that various dilutions of sewage irrigation enhances productivity by 10-15 per cent over the normal waters but long-term sustainability of irrigation with such waters depends on several factors such as site-specific soil, climate, crop, application techniques and socio-political environment. Efforts have also been made to optimize loading rates, methods of water application, capacity of the soils to act as sink and quality of the produce. Disposal in tree plantations for creating green belts around urban areas and phytoremediation through hyper-accumulators of toxic metals, where produce is non-edible but economical such as flowers and aromatic plants also provide viable alternatives. Though the astute management practices can ameliorate the risks of wastewaters, national water development strategies so far have not given much thought to policies for promotion of environmentally safe use of these waters. National policies have to be based on reasonably accurate estimates of the quality and quantity and the expected damage associated with their uncontrolled use/disposal. The other techno-economic issues relate to treatment standards, pricing, subsidies and markets for non-conventional water use in addition to creating awareness of risk management through educational and political campaigns. Aquaculture based disposal of sewage with better live hood opportunities seems to be an attractive alternative in high rainfall areas. With growing water scarcities, the use of wastewater would become even more prevalent, thus it is utmost important to recognize it as a valuable resource and ensure policy initiative for the sake of livelihood of peri- urban farmers, health and other environment related issues. Thus several agro—techniques to minimize the risks of sewage farming in low rainfall agro-ecologies have also been argued. Changing scenario with economic development of the society towards large-scale urbanization is leading to huge problems related to waste water disposal. While uncontrolled reuse has environmental implications on soil/ ground water and human health but at the same time, the effluent do have high nutrient value and thus the potential for use as supplemental irrigation. The present project ’’Impact of Agra canal water on ground water quality, soil properties and crop performance” The objectives are to assess the quality of Agra canal water and to assess the effect of Agra canal water on crop and soil. Different activities of the project are being undertaken in a phased manner.