Role of Government in Ensuring Safe Drinking Water after a Natural Disaster - A Case Study of Kerala Flood

Aabha Benjamin¹ and G. Prakash Williams^2,

¹Department of Economics, University College, Thiruvananthapuram-695034, India

²Department of Botany and Biotechnology, Bishop Moore College, Mavelikara-690110, India

Cite this paper:
Aabha Benjamin and G. Prakash Williams. Role of Government in Ensuring Safe Drinking Water after a Natural Disaster - A Case Study of Kerala Flood. Applied Ecology and Environmental Sciences. 2020; 8(6):373-378. doi: 10.12691/aees-8-6-7

Abstract

Floods are one of the major natural disasters, resulting in the contamination of drinking water sources such as ground water and drinking water. Kerala had an abnormally high rainfall during 1^st June 2018 to 19^th August 2018. It resulted in the heavy loss of life and many people were evacuated and nearly one sixth of the total population were affected. Contamination of drinking water by floods results in water-borne illnesses. Alappuzha district of Kerala was one of the worst hit districts by flood. Economically backward sections of the population are usually more affected by any natural disaster particularly flood. Hence a study was made on the socio-economic status of the flood affected people and role of government in ensuring safe drinking water. The water samples were collected from the ground water sources (wells) of flood affected Mannar panchayath of Chengannur taluk. The water quality of households affected due to flood were subjected to various physico-chemical and microbiological analysis. Also the quality of water collected from flood affected areas were calculated using two indices - WQI and OPI. Based on the results, the recommendations were made to improve the performance of the government in ensuring safe drinking water after a flood.

Keywords:
bacteriological analysis flood socio economic survey water quality WQI and OPI

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

References:

[1]	How Natural Disasters Affect the Water System, URL-https://www.culligan.com/blog/how-natural-disasters-affect-the- water-system retrieved on 10.04.2020.
[2]	Water and Disasters, URL-https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/disasters/ retrieved on 10.04.2020.
[3]	Kawasaki, A., Kawamura, G., Win Zin, W. A local level relationship between floods and poverty: A case in Myanmar, 42, 2020.
[4]	Study report: Kerala floods of August 2018, Govt. India, URL- https://reliefweb.int/report/india/study-report-kerala-floods- august-2018-september-2018.
[5]	2018 Kerala floods, URL- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_floods retrieved on 28.04.2020.
[6]	Ground water Information booklet of Alapuzha District, Kerala State Technical report -series D, Ministry of Water Resources, Central Ground Water Board, Government of India URL-http://cgwb.gov.in/District_Profile/Kerala/Alappuzha%20.pdf retrieved on 10.05.2020.
[7]	APHA (1998) Standard methods for the examination of water and waste water, American Public Health Association, 874pp
[8]	Sharda. A.K, Sharma. M.P (2013). Water quality assessment of Swan River in Himachal Pradesh, India, International Journal of Environmental Sciences Volume 4 No.3,
[9]	Sargaonkar, A and Deshpandey, V., (2003). Development of an Overall Index of Pollution for surface water classification scheme in Indian Context, Environmental monitoring and assessment., 89, pp 43-67.
[10]	Natural Disaster Mitigation in Drinking Water and Sewerage Systems-Guidelines for Vulnerability Analysis: Disaster Mitigation Series, Pan American Health Organization, Regional Office of the World Health Organization, Washington, D.C., 1998 Page no;33-35. URL-https://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/evaluation/watsan2005/annex_files/ PAHO/PAHO1%20-%20Nat%20mit%20in%20wat%20and%20sewage%20- %20VA.pdf, retrieved on 11.04.2020.
[11]	Synthesis Report on the Quality of Drinking Water in the EU examining the Member States' reports for the period 2008-2010 under Directive 98/83/EC http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water- drink/reporting_en.html.
[12]	Economic review, Sate Planning Board, Kerala 2011-12.
[13]	National Sample Survey Organisation, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, 2013.
[14]	Kerala scores worst in access to potable water: NSSO 2013, URL-https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2018/08/25/kerala-floods- struggling-keep-water.html, retrieved on 10.05.2020.
[15]	Shekhar, A., Dwivedi S., and Bhagwat,I. Waterlines, Vol. 29, No. 3, Challenging environments (July 2010), pp. 204-208.
[16]	Koh Liew See, Nasir Nayan & Zullyadini A. Rahaman, Flood Disaster Water Supply: A Review of Issues and Challenges in Malaysia International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 2017, Vol. 7, No. 10.
[17]	WHO; Geneva, Switzerland: 2004. Guidelines for drinking water quality: training pack. [Google Scholar].
[18]	Manoj Kumar and Avinash Puri A review of permissible limits of drinking water. Indian J Occup Environ Med. 2012 Jan-Apr; 16(1): 40-44.
[19]	Indian Standard Specification for Drinking water, IS-10500-1983, Indian standard institution, New Delhi, 1983.
[20]	The New Indian Express, Local self-government department to test water quality in flood hit areas. URL- https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2018/sep/07/loca l-self-government-department-to-test-water-quality-in-flood-hit- areas-186, retrieved on 01.05.2020.
[21]	The news minute, Post floods, drinking water sources contaminated in many parts of Kerala, URL-https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/post-floods-drinking- water-sources-contaminated-many-parts-kerala-87122, retrieved on 02.05.2020.
[22]	Sun R., An, D. Lu, W., Shi Y., Wang, L., Zhang, C., Zhang, P., Qi, H., Wang, Q. Impacts of a flash flood on drinking water quality: case study of areas most affected by the 2012 Beijing flood Heliyon, Volume 2, Issue 2, February 2016, e00071. URL-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584401530 5259, retrieved on 05.02.2019 content/uploads/2013/06/WaterQuality_Report_2017.pdf retrieved on 10.04.2020.