Urban water quality monitoring protocol
The Public Health Engineering Organisation (PHEO) of Odisha, through its division/sub-division offices spread across the state, is the service provider for treated water supply in the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) of Odisha, classified as municipal corporations, municipalities and notified area councils. At present, the routine monitoring of drinking water quality in Odisha is a joint/ independent responsibility of the PHEO and Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (RWS&S). Understanding the status and trends of water from surface and groundwater sources and conditions that affect them are essential to the success of various initiatives taken up by PHEO. Having a standard framework that helps the technical staff of the organisation determine these trends and conditions in a consistent and verifiable way is essential. The use of a standard water quality monitoring protocol, described in this document, provides them with such a framework. The key objectives of this protocol are to provide an integrated manual of sampling protocols for water quality monitoring in Odisha in order to increase consistency across the state and to describe various elements of laboratory management practices to ensure that the data generated is comparable and scientifically correct and in a form that can then be used to result in interventions to improve water quality.