The present case study was undertaken for the Uttaranchal rural water supply and environmental sanitation (SWAJAL) project being executed in twelve districts of State of Uttarakhand. These districts are Nainital, Almora, Bageshwar, Udhamsingh Nagar and Pithoragarh of Kumaon region. The project had covered 493 villages to provide the sustainable health and hygiene benefits by providing safe and adequate water supply along with environmental sanitation. Community awareness and participation in all the stages of planning and implementation of scheme generated the ownership and thereby ensured sustainability of the schemes. Various activities in the project were implemented by the respective village communities through Village Water and Sanitation Committees (VWSC) with the assistance of Support Organization (S.O.), namely Non Government Organizations, private companies, public sector undertakings and Gram Panchayats. Broadly for water quality considerations the water supply schemes could be divided into follOWing two categories: -Piped water supply scheme: Gravity or pumping schemes with spring or gadheras as source in the hilly regions and tube well source schemes in the foothills. -Hand pump schemes in foothills. After implementation of the scheme in the villages, need for ensuring safe water supply has been stressed to all the communities. The community has to ensure chlorination and to test at least once in month at each stand post the total residual chlorine through the chloroscope. Community has to keep proper records of dosing of bleaching powder, its consumption and the test results of the total residual chlorine. In order to ensure regular monitoring of water quality Pollution Control Research Institute, BHEL, Haridwar has been conducted regular chlorination in piped water supply system and H2S strip testing for hand pump system to ensure bacteriological safe water for the villages (493 nos.) in Kumaon region. PCRI, during the process, also trained the community on proper chlorination and H2S strip testing and establish regular water quality monitoring & surveillance system in the village. As part of this project drinking water samples were also collected from various stand posts/hand pumps in the villages of Kumaon region and analyzed for pre-selected physico-chemical and bacteriological parameters. The present case study was undertaken for the community development with respect to Water Resource and Water Quality management in the 493 villages in Kumaon Region. It was found that the level of understanding about water quality at village level reached more then 90% after completion of this work.
