WASA Establishes State-of-the-art Lab To Check Water Quality

RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th Apr, 2024) Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) Rawalpindi had established a state-of-the-art laboratory to check water quality at Rawal Dam Filtration plant and the lab was regularly monitoring and analyzing the quality of water being fetched from all resources, said Managing Director (MD) WASA Muhammad Saleem Ashraf.

He informed that WASA on the directives of the Director General (DG) Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) Kinza Murtaza, had launched a comprehensive campaign to test the quality of water.

The MD said that the agency under a comprehensive campaign would continue to test the quality of water being fetched from all resources including Rawal Dam, Khanpur Dam, WASA tube wells and water filtrations plants of WASA and being supplied to the consumers.

Currently WASA Lab was analyzing three types of water quality parameters namely physical, chemical and bacteriological parameters, he said adding, physical parameters included water appearance, temperature, pollution, oxygen concentration and TDS level in water while chemical parameters included alkalinity, hardness, sulphate, calcium, magnesium, chlorides, chlorine, sulphite, nitrate, ammonia, iron and arsenic of water.

Bacteriological parameters included total coliform and faecal coliform count, he said.

He further informed that the Assistant Director (Water Quality)/Junior Research Officer was responsible for obtaining, analyzing and submitting reports of water samples to assess water quality as per W.H.O.'s global standards for safe drinking water.

A comprehensive plan for regular monitoring of the quality of WASA's surface and ground water sources had been developed and implemented, he said adding, Rawalpindi city had been divided into six zones namely West-I, East-I, West-II, East-II, PP-12 and PP-13.

Assistant Director, Water Quality along with laboratory staff inspects and collects samples of water from 40 tube wells and 10 filtration plants on weekly basis.

Water testing and monitoring project for WASA areas had been completed in three months period, the MD informed.

WASA is running 127 filtration plants in its jurisdiction which were rehabilitated and activated under the government's cleanliness drive.

He said that the agency had adopted a zero tolerance policy on contaminated water and all Standard Operating Procedures were strictly being followed in this regard.