Quality of rainwater harvesting for rural communities of Delta State, Nigeria

S. I. Efe ()
Additional contact information
S. I. Efe: Regional Planning Delta State University

Environment Systems and Decisions, 2006, vol. 26, issue 3, 175-181

Abstract: Abstract This paper assess the level of potability of rainwater samples harvested from catchments roofs in 6 rural communities of Delta State, Nigeria to achieve this goal a stratified sampling technique was adopted in the establishment of 90 sterilized cans into the 3 senatorial districts of Delta; on the basis of one can for thatch, aluminium, asbestos and corrugated iron sheets, and open surfaces. Six rural communities each were chosen from the three senatorial districts, making a total of 18 rural communities that were chosen for the study. The harvested rainwater samples were analysed with the most appropriate equipment and analytical techniques as recommended by World Health Organisation (WHO) and federal ministry of environment in Nigeria. Kruskal—wallis H’test statistical techniques was employed to ascertain whether differences exist amongst the rainwater samples collected from thatch, aluminium, asbestos and corrugated iron roofing sheets, and open surfaces. The result revealed that most of physiochemical and biological characteristics of rainwater samples were generally below the WHO threshold, as such the rainwater characteristics showed satisfactory concentration in these rural communities. Thus, the rainwater from these rural communities should be harvested, stored for human consumption and for other uses by the inhabitants. But treatment is needed in terms of their pH, TSS, Fe and colour. Similarly, significant differences exist amongst the rainwater samples collected from the 5 roofing types, most especially low quality of rainwater were observed in thatch and asbestos roofing sheets. Thus, rainwater from these sources should be purified before consumption.

Keywords: Quality; Rainwater; Harvesting; Rural; Communities; Delta State (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10669-006-7829-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:envsyd:v:26:y:2006:i:3:d:10.1007_s10669-006-7829-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/10669

DOI: 10.1007/s10669-006-7829-6

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment Systems and Decisions from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().