Groundwater Vulnerability to Contaminated Irrigation Waters - A Case of Peri-Urban Agricultural Lands Around an Industrial District of Haryana, India

AbstractPollution of groundwater due to industrial and municipal wastewaters is of a rising concern in many cities and industrial clusters of India. Faridabad - a peri-urban agricultural area is one such industrial site in district Haryana, India. The primary aim of this investigation was, to assess extend of ground water contamination in the peri-urban agricultural sites around Faridabad, Haryana and to assess its contribution due to salt/trace metal laden agricultural irrigation waters. For this, a detailed survey on the farming practices, soils and surface/sub-surface irrigation waters of 30 spatially separated villages around study area was conducted. The surveyed information was used for estimating deep percolation loss, salt/heavy metal leaching and thus vulnerability of ground waters at each sample site to salt/heavy metals by means of a field scale decision support system - IMPASSE©. Analysis showed that the study area was saline (i.e., ECmean = 4.79 2.76 dS/m, Clmean = 2043.30 457.26 ppm and Fmean = 11.57 4.83 ppm). These salt affected agricultural lands were found to be irrigated with (good to marginally alkali) canal, (marginally alkali to alkali) drain and (good to alkali) tube well waters. As a result, the mean EC (2.85 0.85 dS/m), Cl (1227.85 remove-image>295.93 ppm) and F (6.26 2.12 ppm) concentrations in the root zone leachates from each test site, were found to be far beyond their permissible limits of 0.75 dS/m, 1000 ppm and 1.5 ppm. Even the soil root zone water soluble concentrations of some trace metals (viz., Cr: 0.06 0.00 ppm; Ni: 0.02 0.01 ppm, and Pb:0.05 0.01 ppm) were observed to be of some threat to the deep percolating waters. However, the vulnerability assessments indicated that due to existing cropping pattern and deeper water table depths, the study area ground waters were not yet vulnerable to these salts/trace metals in the root zone leachates, and that the presence of salts in the study area ground waters was primarily geogeni