The study conducted revealed that water drawn from the Musi for irrigation contained a mixture of untreated and secondary treated wastewater, generated in Hyderabad. Wastewater has been in use for cultivation in peri-urban Hyderabad for a little over four decades now. “The untreated wastewater used for irrigation is expected to have adverse impacts on the local aquifers, which makes the local groundwater unsuitable for domestic, drinking, and irrigation purposes,” the scientists warned.
The international team includes researchers from Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, and International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Sri Lanka, apart from NGRI and United Nations University. The result of the study was published in the scientific journal, Science of The Total Environment.
Incidentally, in the case of river Musi, the areas irrigated by wastewater and groundwater coexist next to each other. “This means the quality of groundwater in the local aquifers deteriorates year by year, with especially salinity values on the rise,” they said.