Our experience of arsenic in dug-wells

Please find herewith the photographs of a dugwell, 12 feet diameter, 45 ft deep and the reservoir 20ft x 20ft x 5ft (two such reservoirs; one below the ground level and one above the ground level). During last 18 months our Ashram (a hermitage) people are using this dugwell. Earlier we had 10 tubewells in Ashram and all were arsenic contaminated [75 û250 microgram per litre; depth 30ft û 75ft]. At present we have stopped using all the hand tube-wells.

Address of our Ashram:

Village: Betai Dangapara, Post Office: Betai, Block: Tehatta-2, District: Nadia, West Bengal, India.
During last 18 months I had tested for almost every 2 weeks interval arsenic, iron and other parameters from this dugwell and our dug-well water is wonderful (arsenic concentration maximum 18 microgram per litre, iron max. 200 microgram per litre).

During last 2 years we had analyzed about 32 big-dugwells (12-15ft diameter) from arsenic affected areas of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand and 30 of them have arsenic between <3 & 30 microgram per litre except 2 dugwells (arsenic concentration 51 microgram per litre and 53 microgram per litre). Twenty years before, affected villagers were using these dug wells and they were not suffering from the type of the health problem they are facing now.

So far we have analyzed more than 700 dugwells from the arsenic affected areas of West Bengal and Bangladesh. We have found 90% dugwells are safe with respect to arsenic (<3 û 35 microgram per litre; Average 15 microgram per litre). There are some areas where we have found arsenic contamination above 50 microgram per litre (maximum 330 microgram per litre). One such area in Bangladesh is Samta village where many dugwells are arsenic contaminated and the dugwells are shallow (10- 20 ft ), recent and 2-3 ft diameter and waters have foul smell.

So far we had analyzed 483 dugwells from 4 arsenic affected districts of West Bengal and the distribution of arsenic concentration is shown below:

No. of dugwell's analyzed                                                              483
<3 microgram per litre                                                                  169 (35%)
3-10 microgram per litre                                                                 237 (49%)
11-20 microgram per litre                                                               66 (14%)
21-49 microgram per litre                                                                8 (1.7%)
50 - 60 microgram per litre                                                               3 (0.6%)
Maximum Conc. of As microgram per litre                                        60

I will request my friends who have doubt about arsenic in dug-well water to visit our Ashram and see our dug-well and taste/test the quality of water. Bacteria in dug-wells were a mess 50 years before but with the advancement of technology in 21 century, it is no longer a problem.

Dipankar Chakraborti Director and Head
School of Environmental Studies
Jadavpur University, Calcutta û 700 032, India
Tel: 91 33 24146233 / 24146760, Fax: 91 33 24146266,
Email:dcsoesju@vsnl.com