Does Source Sanitation Affect Water Quality?

Abstract

In order to correlate sanitation around water source with the quality of water from the source this study was conducted a cross-sectional study on 15 boreholes in 5 political wards using quantitative method of data collection. The Field survey was carried out in selected wards of Sabongari Local Government Area (LGA) of Kaduna State, Nigeria, while the laboratory analysis was carried out at the Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering between February and March, 2017. All functional boreholes in each of the five selected wards within Sabon gari LGA that served as communal source of water supply were included. A total of 15 boreholes (3 from each ward) were studied for water quality and surrounding sanitation. The physicochemical and microbiological analysis of water samples collected from the respective boreholes were carried out using standard methods and the results were compared to the Nigerian Standard for Drinking Water Quality and the WHO standards for conformity or otherwise while a checklist was used to assess the surrounding sanitation. The total score of both the water quality and sanitation were categorized respectively as poor, fair and good. A t-test was carried out using STATA/SE 13.1 Statistical Software to correlate the surrounding sanitation with the water quality. The confidence interval for the mean difference between water quality and sanitation (0.2384 – 1.3616) and the P-value (P = .0086) suggest that there is a relationship between the sanitation and the quality of water. As efforts are being made to increase access to clean water especially in developing economies like Nigeria, serious attention need to be given to the sanitation of the surroundings of the water source to prevent compromise of the water quality.