Journal of Global Resources
Volume 4 (02)
July 2018
ISSN: 2395-3160 (Print), 2455-2445 (Online)

Page 71-78

10AN IMPACT OF HAZARDOUS WASTE ON GROUND WATER – A CASE STUDY OF
VISHAKHAPATNAM DISTRICT, ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA
Vignesh K. S.,1 Madha Suresh V.2 and Aaron A.3
12

Research Scholar, University of Madras, Chennai, India
Professor and Head, CNHDS University of Madras Chennai, India
3Manager, Shree Ram Group of Company, Gujarat, India
Email: ksvigneshphd@gmail.com

Abstract: Ground Water plays a primary role which comprises fresh water resources in the ratioof two third of the world. The ground water is the major resource for all purposes of waterrequirements in India. It is to be highlighted that country’s economic development and foodsecurity is dependent on ground water sources. This main aim of this research is to study thephysio-chemical characteristics of ground water in the environs of dumping yard,
Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh. The study is focused on the dumping yard which
comprises an area of about 912 acres. The instinctive dumps in the unlined sewage drains drive
pollutants in to the ground water. The natural quality of ground water tends to be degraded byhuman activities like improper disposal of solid waste, hazard urbanization and industrialization.
The results concluded that the certain physio-chemical parameters intended for the water
quality show the drastic variation when compared to Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).This
proves the impact of hazardous waste on ground water for the taken for the study.
Key words: Physio-Chemical, Dumping Yard, Hazard Urbanization, BIS
Introduction
Ground water is one of the earth’s vital renewable and widely distributed resources and equallyimportant source of water supply around the world. The main concern for the human is thequality of water since they are interlinked with each other. The importance of water quality forhuman health has recently attracted a great deal of interest. This study accounts that indeveloping countries like India around 80 per cent of all diseases are directly related to poor
drinking water quality. In the words of Goulding (2000), the groundwater is believed to becomparatively much clean and free from pollution than the surface water, whereas it canbecome contaminated naturally or because of numerous types of human activities. Based on
the research study it was identified that most of the population is wholly dependent on groundwater as the only source of drinking water. The rural areas make use of ground water for the
agricultural purposes in case of scarcity of rain. Contamination of groundwater can result inpoor drinking water quality, loss of water supply, high clean-up costs, high costs for alternative
water supplies, and/or potential health problems. A wide variety of materials have been
identified as contaminants that are found in groundwater. These include synthetic organic
chemicals, hydrocarbons, inorganic cations, inorganic anions, pathogens, and radio nuclides(Fetter, 1999). The huge demand and upgrading competition for water has posed a newchallenge for environmental management. An uncontrolled use of bore-well technology has led
to the extraction of ground water. This leads to insufficient recharge rate of ground water. Water
intended for human consumption should be “safe and wholesome” i.e. free from pathogenic
agent and harmful chemicals, pleasant to taste and useable for domestic purpose (Parashar etal., 2006).

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The use of geographical information technology (GIS) technology has greatly simplified
the assessment of natural resources and environmental concerns, including groundwater. In
groundwater studies, GIS is commonly used for site suitability analyses, managing siteinventory data, estimation of groundwater vulnerability to contamination, groundwater flow
modeling, modeling the solute transport and leaching, and integrating groundwater quality
assessment models with spatial data to create spatial decision support systems (Engel andNavulur, 1999). Groundwater is a valuable natural resource that is essential for human health,socio-economic development, and functioning of ecosystems (Humphreys, 2009). In India
severe water scarcity is becoming common in several parts of the country, especially in arid andsemi-arid regions. Remote sensing and GIS has emerged as a powerful tool for storing,
analyzing, and displaying spatial data and using these data for decision making in several areas
including engineering and environmental fields (Burrough and McDonnell, 1998). GIS has beenused in the map classification of groundwater quality, based on geology, geomorphology orland-use and land-cover (Asadi et. al., 2007). In such studies, GIS is utilized to locate
groundwater quality zones suitable for different usages such as irrigation and domestic(Yammani, 2007). Currently, groundwater quality is the major concern and therefore emerged
as one of the main environmental issues. Water demand for drinking and domestic purposes
has been increasing due to improve of way of life of folks and demographic pressures. Hence,
this research has been taken to ascertain groundwater pollution hotspots in the environs ofdumping area. The effluents of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, Hindustan Zinc Ltd, Coromandel
Fertilizers, LG Polymers move around in the course of groundwater movements and movetowards marsh land through home areas due to topographic control.
Hazardous waste products are the discarded/rejected material being left-out from theseveral public sources typically. Investigations declared in the study area revealed that, rapid
growth in population through the recent decades have led to increasing levels of urban solidwastes. In most of the developing countries, hazardous waste disposal has become the majorproblem. This problem is dominant in the places where the density of population is very highand scarcity of land is adequate for landfills. They majorly consist of consumed items such as
food waste and containers, and other commercial, institutional sources. A lot of the industries
have their own mechanism for handling professional hazardous waste.
Study Area
Visakhapatnam district has been home for a number of large and medium industries such as theHindustan Petroleum Corporation, Vishakhapatnam Steel plant, Bharat Heavy Plates andVessels, Hindustan Polymers and Coromandel Fertilizers. Recently, the Visakhapatnam Export
Processing Zone has come up and there are indications of the city emerging as a booming
industrial metropolis. Commensurate with the growth of industrial and allied activities in andaround the city, its area grew from 30 km2. in 1960 to over 80 km2 presently. The city’s
population according to 2001 census is about 1.33 million.
The Visakhapatnam municipal corporation area was 120 km2 till January 2006 and now
expanded to 545 km2 and renamed as Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC)
under the Visakhapatnam District of Andhra Pradesh. The study area is covered in 65 O/1, O/2,O/3, O/5 and O/6 of Survey of India topo sheets on 1:50,000 scales bounded between 170 32ꞌ
and 170 52ꞌ Northern latitudes and 830 04ꞌand 830 24ꞌ Eastern longitudes (Fig.1). For theconvenience of administration GVMC area is divided into 70 wards, where the area of the ward
is based on density of population.

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Figure: 01: Location of Study Area

Methodology
The methodology adopted for the study is collection of ground water samples from bore wells
and also from shallow deep aquifers. It is to be highlighted that the 11 water samples werecollected from various in and around the dumping yards within the vicinity of 5 kilometer radius.
These samples were taken for analyzing the chemical properties in the laboratory with respect
to the acceptable guidelines (IS 10500, 2012). The adjacent procedure for collecting thehazardous samples are identified with the respective location predominantly includes wide
diversity of population and settlements. The collected samples were analyzed for thedetermination of various chemical elements such as Na+, K+, Po43-, NO3-, SO4-, Cl-, F-, and Fe
using Flame Photometer and UV Spectrophotometer method with the reference to the IndianStandards. The other trace metals of Al, Mn, Cu, Zn, Se, Rb, Cd, Pb and Co were analyzed
using the Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy. About 10 kg of hazardous solid waste collectedfrom 10 points were thoroughly mixed and then reduced by method of quartering till a sample ofsuch a size is obtained which can be handled personally. The sample so obtained wassubjected to physical analysis.
Results and Discussion
The details of the results of physio-chemical analysis of water samples of the study area are
given in table 1. The laboratory analysis highlights that the pH values of the collected water
samples varies from 6.9 to 7.8 (Graph. 2) with the average value of 7.323 which indicates thealkaline nature. The electrical conductivity (Graph.3) measured from 710 µs to 2205 µs with amean value 1308.364. The Total dissolved solids have exceeded the permissible limits of BIS
standards which records an average value of 772 mg/L (Fig.4). The status of N O3 is shown inGraph. 5. There is crystal evident from the (Graph. 6 and 7) that Na+, K+ ions are in thepermissible limits of BIS. The sample analysis results for potassium, nitrites, sulphate andphosphate are shown in Graph. 8, 9, 10, and 11 respectively. It is noted that the major source of73

sodium is due to anthropogenic agents. The concentration of sodium observed was ranging
from 10 mg/L to 540 mg/L with average value of 61.3636. The concentration of chloride is in thepermissible limit of BIS standards (Graph. 12) as an exceptional of two samples which exceed
the maximum permissible limit of BIS standards and an average value is observed to be
191.0909. It is very well known that if the Chlorine (Cl) level is more than 250 mg/L, whichtends to make the water saline and affects real taste.
The fluoride (Graph. 6) content present in the samples lies between 0.38 and 0.72 mg/L
with an average value of 0.56. The sulphate content analysis provided in the (Graph.10) are in
the range from 24 to 246 mg/L with average value of 94.818 and other side Zn ranges from0.27-0.307mg/L with an average value of 0.873. Other metals like lead, cadmium, chromiumand copper were found to be negligible in all the samples. The coefficient of correlation wasplotted against the various ions which are clearly mentioned in the (Table 2). The coefficient ofcorrelation between Cl and TDS are found to be high (0.8) that indicates dominance level of Cl
ions in the ground water of study area. The K+, and Na+ have also shown the positive correlation
with TDS (Na, TDS, R2=0.8) & (K, TDS, R2=0.83) which indicates dominance of Na and K in
the study area. The coefficient of correlation of sulphates with TDS was, 0.8 which is possibly
due to the weathering of rocks. Among the analyzed cations and anions, the Cl was mostdominant ion contributing (48%), followed by SO4 (23%) and Na (16%) which is shown in Graph
14. Cl (48%)>SO4 (23%)>Na (16%)>NO3 (1.54%)>K (0.9%)>PO4, F (0.14%). In Graph thecoefficient of correlation between TDS and conductivity is depicted.

pHConductivity µs/cm

Graph. 1

sample-11

sample-10

sample-9

sample-8

sample-7sample-6

sample-5

sample-4

sample-3

sample-1

sample-2

2500
2000
1500
1000
500
01086420

Graph. 2

TDS (mg/L)

No3 mg/L

1500
1000
500
015

IS:1050…

5No3-Drinking water specification as per IS:10500,2012

Graph. 3

IS:10500,2012

Graph. 4

74

s-11

Total Dissolved Solids at 105°C (mg/l)

s-10

s-9

s-8

s-7

s-6

s-5

s-4

s-3

s-2

0s-1

sample…

sample…

sample-9

sample-8

sample-7

sample-6

sample-5

sample-4

sample-3

sample-2

sample-1

10Na+

Fluorides mg/L
1.5

200

1150

0.5

100Na+050s-1 s-2 s-3 s-4 s-5 s-6 s-7 s-8 s-9 s-10s-110s-1s-2s-3s-4s-5s-6s-7s-8s-9s-10s-11

fluorides F-(mg/l)
Drinking water specification as per IS:10500,2012

Graph. 5

Graph. 6

Potassium mg/L

Nitrites (mg/L)

86K+

201 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 110.6
0.4
0.2
0sample location

Nitrites Nitrogen as NO2-N

Graph. 7

Graph. 8

Phosphates (mg/L)

Drinking water specification as perIS:10500,2012

Phosphates as PO43-Graph. 9

Graph. 1075

s-11s-10s-9s-8s-7s-6s-1

Sulphates as SO42-

s-3

500
0s-2

10.8
0.6
0.4
0.20

s-1
s-2
s-3
s-4
s-5
s-6
s-7
s-8
s-9
s-10
s-11

Sulphates as SO42-Sulphates (mg/L)

s-5

4

0.8

s-4

K mg/l

10

1

s-1
s-2
s-3
s-4
s-5
s-6
s-7
s-8
s-9
s-10
s-11

Nitrites Nitrogen as NO2-N

12

Total anions

Chlorides mg/L
800

800

700

600

600

Cl-(mg/l)

cations

400
200
0500
400
300

s-1

s-3

s-5s-7s-9 s-11200
100

Chlorides a Cl¯ (mg/l)

25

Drinking water specification as per
IS:10500,2012

125

175

225

cations

Graph. 11

Graph. 12

TDS vs. Conductivity
1500

Cations vs Anions[CATEGOR
Y NAME]

1300

conductivity

75[CATEGOR
Y NAME] [CATEGORY NAME][CATEGOR
Y NAME]

1100[CATEGOR
Y NAME]

900

Na+K+
Cl-

[CATEGOR
Y NAME]

700
500

PO4SO4-300
700

1200

1700

2200

[CATEGOR
Y NAME]

2700

FNO3-TDS

Graph. 13

Graph. 14

Conclusion
The analysis recorded with higher concentration of certain parameters is due to the villages
disposing the waste in to the seepage of unlined sewage drain. In this ground water the major
source of sodium is due to the anthropogenic sources i.e. due to improper disposal of sewage
waste which is possibly by caused contamination of ground water due to leachate of ionsthrough soil. Excess sodium content which is above 200 mg/L may lead to high blood pressure,
so is the risk for heart disease and stroke and also women with pregnancy. The results ofphysical/chemical parameters and trace metals of groundwater have been compared with theBureau of Indian standards-10500 (2012) and World Health Organization (1971 and 1983)
standards. So far, no major studies have been carried out on hazardous waste interaction withgroundwater. In this study, it is observed that the groundwater regime is being polluted due toimproper dumping of solid waste in unlined sewage drains, besides geological causes.

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Table 01: Physio-Chemical Analysis of Water Samples

Table 02: Coefficient of Correlation of Ions

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