ASSESMENT OF SURFACE WATER QUALITY IN COIMBATORE, TAMILNADU

The management of surface water quality is a major environmental challenge. Monitoring dif erent sources of pollutant load contribution to the surface water is quite a dif icult, laborious and expensive process which sometimes leads to analytical errors also. In the current study, lake water were collected from dif erent locations in the Coimbatore urban to assess water quality for drinking purpose as well as for irrigation purpose by analysing the major cations (Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+, K+) and anions (HCO3−, Cl−, F−, SO42−, NO3−, CO32−) besides some physical and chemical parameters (pH, electrical conductivity, total alkalinity, and total hardness). It is clearly observed that the Kurichi Lake is less contaminated than other lakes because as it is directly connected to Noyyal river whereas Periyakulam Lake is more concentration in potassium, Nitrite, Free ammonia and magnesium due to disposal of domestic sewage water and industrial wastes. Vallankulam, Singanallur and Selvampathy lakes are highly contaminated due to disposal of domestic wastes by the surrounding area. The WQI showed that nearly 30% of the samples were good and the remaining was poor for drinking purpose. Through hierarchical cluster analysis two major groups of cluster were obtained from the sampling. Analysis based on sodium percentage, SAR and Kelley's ratio showed that 60% of the samples are suitable for irrigation purpose. Statistical analysis like correlation and factor analysis have performed for delineation of ionic relationship.