Quality and Safety of Rural Community Drinking Water Sources in Guto Gida District, Oromia, Ethiopia

The quality of drinking water has always been a major public health concern, especially in developing countries where access to improved water supply and sanitation is very low. This study aimed to assess the bacteriological and physicochemical quality of rural community drinking water sources in the Guto Gida district. A cross-sectional study was conducted in selected rural areas of the district from January to June 2016. Water samples were collected from four types of sources (protected dug well, open dug well, protected spring, and open spring) found in 8 locations of the study area. The membrane filtration technique was employed to determine the total coliform and faecal coliform load of the samples. The physicochemical characteristics such as total dissolved solid (TDS), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), turbidity, temperature, color, iron, manganese, lead, fluoride, zinc, sulphate, nitrate, and phosphate were analyzed following the American Public Health Association and WHO standard protocols. Our results revealed that 90.6% and 87.5% of water samples were positive for total coliform and faecal coliform, respectively. Thus, the majority of the studied water sources could be classified as polluted with respect to coliform load. Our results also have shown that most of the water sources showed marginally tolerable quality with respect to color, EC, TDS, turbidity, nitrate, sulphate, and phosphate. However, the protected sources had poor quality in zinc, lead, iron, manganese, and pH with values above the permissible levels. Thus, the drinking water source quality of the study areas requires appropriate interventions such as improving the existing water source infrastructure and access to sanitation services.