Impact of Municipal Solid Waste on Groundwater in the Environs of Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation Area, Andhrapradesh, India

The study deals with physico-chemical characteristics of groundwater in the environs of Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC), Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh. The study area covering about 1143 km2 is famous for major industries, often called as Industrial City or Visakha Steel City. Haphazard urbanization, industrialization and improper disposal of solid wastes leading to contamination of groundwater, have been focused in this study. The improper and unscientific solid waste dumps in the unlined sewage drains drive pollutants into the groundwater regime which is an irrevocable loss and literally not possible to bring the quality of groundwater to its original state. In this study, about 25 groundwater samples were collected covering the entire area during August 2011. The water samples were analyzed to identify the parameters of physical, chemical and trace metals on the basis of APHA standard methodology. Trace metals of Al, Mn, Cu, Zn, Se, Rb, Cd, Pb and Co are in high content in areas like Akkireddypalem, Balacheruvu and Lankelapalem. These areas are in the vicinity of industries like Hindustan Zinc Ltd. and Visakha steel plant. Systematic work has not been carried out to discover the reasons for the accumulation of higher toxicants in these areas. The concentrations of physical, chemical parameters and trace metals in groundwater samples were compared with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and World Health Organization (WHO), and observed that the water quality parameters were exceeding the permissible limits in the villages of Balacheruvu, Akkireddypalem Sabbavaram, Tarluwada and Kapulauppada dump yard. During this study, it is observed that the higher content of different elements in groundwater is due to effluents, from industries and leachates from improper handling of urban solid wastes. Keyword: Physico-chemical analysis, trace metal analysis