Characterization of underground water resources of Minna, Nigeria for domestic uses

Abstract

The general water shortage afflicting Minna, the capital of Niger State of Nigeria has made people resort to access underground and subsurface water through sinking of shallow, intermediate and deep wells to alleviate their problems particularly during dry seasons of the year when temperatures are quite high (above 400C) and most surface water is dried up coupled with minimal supplies from state public water board. This study adopted 11 sample wells in the categories affordable by most citizens located at different parts of the town for physic-chemical and biological characterization to ascertain compliance of their water samples with the World Health Organization’s guidelines for safe drinking water. They were measured with tape rule and found to belong to the shallow well category as their depths ranged from 1.2 to 15.0m and widths 1.0 to 5m. Standard test methods as described by Degrémont (2010) schedule of water analyses were adopted for the physic-chemical examinations that included turbidity, PH, temperature, alkalinity, hardness, colour and chloride ions. Bacterial micro-organisms present were determined with Eosin methylene blue agar (EMB) system. The result showed that all samples were unsuitable biologically as each well water contained bacterial presence in excess of Nill/100ml and none satisfied the physic-chemical qualities specified by WHO standard. Appropriate mechanical, biological or chemical treatment would be needed to purify water from each well to make it suitable for human consumption so as to solve un-investigated problems that ignorant consumptions of the raw well water might have been causing to citizens.