Groundwater Quality Scenario in Karnataka State - Introduction and Overview (2004)

As part of its committment to provide safe drinking water to its rural communities, the Karnataka State Government as part of its World Bank-assisted Jal Nirmal Yojana program, implemented through the Karnataka Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency, took an initiative to adopt a Geographical Information System (GIS) approach to develop a Spatial Information and Knowledge base on groundwater quality of Karnataka.

As part of this effort, a comprehensive study of the quality of groundwater being supplied in rural areas has been taken up and water quality mapping, building of GIS database and profiles have been generated for 27 districts and 175 taluks. For this the chemical analytical data of water samples collected from bore wells in different villages by the Rural Development and Engineering Department (RDED) have been used. In all about 1,54,491 groundwater samples have been collected and analysed for 14 major parameters covering 33,647 villages out of the total 56,682 villages in the state.

The introduction document, contains summary observations and analysis of the data across each parameter, analysis of the basic nature of water quality problems of the state as well as possibile strategies to improve the water quality situation. The results of the data, have been shown in the form of tables for the districts and taluks and a composite table for the entire state.

The overview document, contains basic information about Karnataka state, followed by GIS state-level maps shown across various study parameters supported by relevant tables and graphs.

We acknowledge the support of S Vishwanath (Rainwater Club Bangalore) and Anand Kumar Naidu (Bangalore) in making this publication available on India Water Portal.