Urbanization and Groundwater Quality: A Case of Bhubaneswar in Odisha, India

Abstract

Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha, has been declared as an outstanding smart city and is under continuous process of urbanization. The escalating population of the city along with massive influxes of migrants, is triggering unplanned, uncontrolled, and unrestricted urban sprawl, which is contributing to exorbitant changes in the spatial footprints of the city. It is irony that although being surrounded by rivers on three sides of the city, ground water resources are based for domestic, industrial and agricultural uses due to lack of piped water supply system in many parts of the urban area and the fringes. The rapid growth of the city has led to profound pressure on the precious groundwater resource degrading both quality and quantity. In addition, most of the unsewered parts of the urban areas are elevating the nitrate and other contaminants in the groundwater. The remediation of the resource under incessant threat by both contamination and inappropriate use may be practically impossible in future. Since trend detection of hydrologic data is useful in the investigation of water quality parameters, in this study, eight physical chemical variables of groundwater quality of Bhubaneswar obtained from Odisha Pollution Control Board from 2010 to 2017 were analyzed using the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test. Spatial variations of Sen Slope displaying the positive values with large magnitude in the Secretariat area indicates that the groundwater quality is declining at a higher rate. The quality may not be an issue presently but may be alarming in next few decades