The scarcity of drinking water has become a bitter reality in many countries. The gap between demand and supply of water has been increasing exponentially year by year. Deforestation, use of groundwater vigorously for agricultural practices, and polluting our present water resources such as rivers, lakes, and wells are triggering the freshwater scarcity problem. Ninety percent of people of Uttarakhand depend on springs for their daily life activities. In such a case, the quality and quantity of spring water should be a prime topic to be focussed on. In the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, spring water quality is good but there is an issue with its availability, especially in summer. This review paper details the studies that have been conducted on nutrient status, hardness, heavy metals, and the presence of microbiological diversity in spring water, as well as this article, also uncovers the information of some critical springs, geological settings of their aquifers, and the steps that have been adopted to rejuvenate the spring. Some other practices have been done for springs’ revival and their improvement in discharge rate, by the government and local communities like construction of percolation pits, contour trenches, check dams, and improvement of water resources which are also tried to touch those areas. It has been observed among the analyzed sample that the Kumaon region is dominated by arsenic, cadmium, chromium, and lead, whereas aluminum, barium, cobalt, and manganese are more in the Garhwal region. Apart from spring, this review paper also reveals the physicochemical characteristics of the spring-fed river and lakes of the Kumaon region.
The quality of spring water is highly important to the people of hills for their everyday lives in Bageshwar district, which is located in Uttarakhand's Eastern Kumaon area between latitudes 29.49° N and 79.45° E, at an elevation of 1,004 meters above mean sea level. The study area map was created using the open-source freeware software QGIS, and the geocoding of the selected area was performed by entering Latitude and Longitude coordinates. Spring water were collected and analysed based on the standard methods for the eleven springs of Bageshwar city and its nearby villages for two seasons during the winter (December 2019) and in summer (March 2020). The present study assessed the drinking water quality of perennial spring in and around Bageshwar using the WQI by Weighted Arithmetic Water Quality Index Method. For calculating the WQI, 15 physicochemical parameters, namely, pH, alkalinity, Chloride, Electrical Conductivity, Total Dissolved Solid, Turbidity, Total Hardness, Potassium, Sodium, Fluoride, Iron, Nitrate, Calcium, Magnesium and Total Hardness were taken. The WQI values show that spring water with WQI values ranging from 4.57 to 17.83 in winter season 6.72 to 27.72 in summer season falls under excellent category, except for Bhaniya Dhaar-1 (BS8) village spring, which were classified to good water category. A paired t-test was applied to compare significant variations in water quality between two seasons, revealing a significant difference (p value<0.05) in water quality between seasons. Water from all of the evaluated spring sources is safe to drink, despite the fact that some parameters exceed permitted limits. To ensure the quality and security of the water supply to the people of these regions, it is preferable to conduct a simple filtration process before drinking the water sampled from the springs.
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