Environmental Burden of Surface and Groundwater Quality: How big are the Contaminants in Girei Town, Nigeria?

Assessment of surface and groundwater quality was explored in Girei sub-urban town by analytical analyses on physico-chemical water quality indicators from various sources of drinking water supplies: stream, hand dug wells, boreholes and harvested rain water within the study area with the aim to quantifying the concentrations of contaminants and compare them with World Health Organization (WHO) drinking water quality standards. Water samples were collected from these sources and analyzed in the laboratory in line with methods noted in the literature. Results obtained showed that physical parameters such as turbidity and TSS for the stream and hand dug wells; 46 NTU, 42 TCN, 30-90 NTU and 25-54TCN were critically above WHO and Nigerian standards for drinking water quality. Concentrations of metal pollutants such as manganese, magnesium, chloride, calcium, iron, lead and total hardness for hand dug wells, stream and borehole water that ranged from 73mg/l to3124mg/l were also above WHO standard. The bacteriological analyses for the hand dug wells and stream values ranged from 21 to 34 MPN which shows higher values when compared to borehole, harvested rain water values and WHO standard. One-way ANOVA variance was tested on the data generated and produced F value of 14. 25 at 5% level of significance. Recommendation for effective water management strategies was made to improve water conservation and basic sanitary hygiene in the study area as a result of high level of contaminants obtained from various water supplies.