HYDERABAD: Telangana needs to improve the quality of drinking water it provides. According to data provided by the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti, the State has the sixth highest percentage of drinking water samples that tested positive for bacteriological contamination among all States.
This data excludes the water supplied to Hyderabad, where according to a Central government report released last year, the drinking water supplied is second safest in the country after Mumbai. In absolute numbers, of the 4,50,956 samples of drinking water that were tested, 32,722 samples tested positive for the bacteriological contamination, which is 7 per cent of the samples.
Also, 55,055 samples or 12 per cent of all samples tested positive for chemical contamination. The five other States where the percentage of drinking water samples testing positive for bacteriological contamination was higher than Telangana are Kerala, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand.
Among all districts in Telangana, Khammam fared the worst where out of the 35,210 drinking water samples that were tested, 12,219 were found to be contaminated with chemicals and 8,203 tested positive for bacteriological contamination. Following Khammam were Medak(5,359), Mahbubnagar (4,459), Nalgonda (3,728) and Rangareddy (3,702) districts.
Water quality is tested for chemical parameters that include pH, turbidity, TDS, total hardness, alkalinity, fluoride, chloride, sulphate, nitrate, arsenic and iron along with bacteriological parameters of total coliforms and E-coli.
According to the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti, Telangana has the second highest coverage of Functional Household Tap Connection (FHTC) in the country, covering 98.4 per cent rural households with tap water connections.
Dr MVSS Giridhar, Professor and Head of the Centre for Water Resources at JNTU Hyderabad, said: "The bacteriological contamination is almost always due to mixing of sewage with drinking water, whereas the chemical contamination occurs when either the groundwater is contaminated or if there is mixing of sewage, which results in higher nitrate and phosphate values in the drinking water."
“The leakage points in drinking water pipelines must be identified and rectified to avoid contamination, along with maintenance of pressure in the pipelines. Provision of proper sewage outlets in rural areas will also help,” he added.