Impact of Covid-19 Lockdown on Availability of Drinking Water in the Arsenic-Affected Ganges River Basin

Srimanti Duttagupta, Soumendra N. Bhanja, Avishek Dutta, Soumyajit Sarkar, Madhumita Chakraborty, Ashok Ghosh, Debapriya Mondal and Abhijit Mukherjee
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Srimanti Duttagupta: Graduate School of Public Health, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA
Soumendra N. Bhanja: Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, Karnataka 560012, India
Avishek Dutta: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
Soumyajit Sarkar: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302, India
Madhumita Chakraborty: Department of Geology and Geophysics, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302, India
Ashok Ghosh: Bihar State Pollution Control Board, Patliputra, Patna, Bihar 800010, India
Debapriya Mondal: Centre for Clinical Education, Institute of Medical and Biomedical Education St George’s, University of London, London SW17 0RE, UK
Abhijit Mukherjee: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302, India

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 6, 1-20

Abstract: The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has not only resulted in immense loss of human life, but it also rampaged across the global economy and socio-cultural structure. Worldwide, countries imposed stringent mass quarantine and lockdowns to curb the transmission of the pathogen. While the efficacy of such lockdown is debatable, several reports suggest that the reduced human activities provided an inadvertent benefit by briefly improving air and water quality. India observed a 68-days long, nation-wide, stringent lockdown between 24 March and 31 May 2020. Here, we delineate the impact of the lockdown on groundwater and river sourced drinking water sustainability in the arsenic polluted Ganges river basin of India, which is regarded as one of the largest and most polluted river basins in the world. Using groundwater arsenic measurements from drinking water wells and water quality data from river monitoring stations, we have studied ~700 km stretches of the middle and lower reaches of the As (arsenic)-polluted parts of the river for pre-lockdown (January–March 2020), syn-lockdown (April–May), and post-lockdown periods (June–July). We provide the extent of As pollution-free groundwater vis-à-vis river water and examine alleviation from lockdown as an opportunity for sustainable drinking water sources. The overall decrease of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentrations and increase of pH suggests a general improvement in Ganges water quality during the lockdown in contrast to pre-and-post lockdown periods, potentially caused by reduced effluent. We also demonstrate that land use (agricultural/industrial) and land cover (urban-periurban/rural) in the vicinity of the river reaches seems to have a strong influence on river pollutants. The observations provide a cautious optimistic scenario for potentially developing sustainable drinking water sources in the arsenic-affected Ganges river basin in the future by using these observations as the basis of proper scientifically prudent, spatially adaptive strategies, and technological interventions.

Keywords: Ganges river; COVID-19; water quality; lockdown; BOD; COD; fecal coliform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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