An appraisal of geohydrological status and assessment of groundwater quality of Indpur Block, Bankura District, West Bengal, India

The present work aimed to evaluate the overall hydro-geological status of Indpur block, Bankura district, West Bengal, India. Despite of having adequate annual precipitation, south-western districts of the state of West Bengal, India, are considered to be a significantly water-stressed area of the state. This is because of unfavorable geological setting near to subsurface occurrence of impervious lithology and inundated nature of surface drainage pattern. The study was carried out both in pre- and post-monsoon seasons of 2019 to obtain an updated current status on concentration and spatiotemporal fluctuations of controlling ions of the subsurface water. Estimation of major physicochemical parameters and specific qualitative chemical characterization of groundwater were rated through field and laboratory studies. Water samples were collected from twenty-two equidistantly scattered tube wells in the block. Seasonal variations of water table elevation heads and subsurface shift of predominant recharge zones of the block were also demarked. Drinking, domestic and irrigation suitability of the block water were measured by the estimation of parameters such as Sodium Adsorption Ratio (SAR), Magnesium Adsorption Ratio (MAR), Soluble Sodium Percentage (SSP), Residual Sodium Carbonate (RSC), Permeability Index (PI), Total Hardness (TH) and Kelly’s ratio (KR) and piper trilinear plots. Sustainable non-availability of groundwater seems to be the major problem of the studied area, which intern resulted in overexploitation, mostly for cultivation practices causing considerable depletion of its suitability as drinking and irrigation. Further, results show that suitability of the water both for domestic and irrigation of the studied area may be termed as ‘good’ to ‘moderate’ with a few exceptions on a local scale. Judging by every parameter, it can be stated that groundwater of Indpur block is not much suitable for drinking purposes.