Assessing Water Quality of Rural Water Supply in Thailand

Abstract

The water quality of water supply is closely associated with human health. And providing safe water supply is one of important public health priorities. Providing water supply to small rural communities in Thailand is mainly through two types of rural water supply systems, groundwater supply system and surface water supply system. The objective of this paper is to measure the water quality to assess existing performance of rural water supply system for small rural community. Twenty five rural water supply locations in four provinces, Nakhon Ratchasima, Chaiyaphum, Buriram and Surin province of Northeastern area in Thailand were selected as sampling location. The water samples from each sampling points were measured physical, chemical and biological parameters. The sampling points were water resource, storage tank and household of each rural water supply location. The results of water quality were assessed to meet the water supply quality standard of the World Health Organization (WHO) and national surface water and groundwater quality standard. The results of water resource quality indicated that the groundwater resource quality was found to be limit exceeded more than surface water resource. It might be contaminated by human or animal. And the results of storage tank and household water qualities indicated that both rural water supply systems had problems to produce the water supply that meet the standard especially in biological standard. It indicated a failure in the disinfection process. As the results of study support that the process of rural water supply system should be improved especially the disinfection process.