Groundwater Contamination : Sources and Remediation Techniques

Large number of people in the world depends on groundwater sources to fulfil their needs pertaining to domestic, industry and agricultural activities. The needs for these activities have been increasing day by day due to population growth, urbanizations, and industrializations. Remediation of groundwater contamination has become a serious environmental concern as it has a direct impact on many aspects of people’s lives. The sources like municipal (sewer leakage, septic systems, and landfills), industrial (liquid wastes, tanks and pipeline leakage, and mining activities), agricultural (fertilizers and soil amendments, pesticides, insecticides, and herbicides) and miscellaneous (stockpiles, roadway de-icing, sea water intrusion and tectonic occurrences), which have significant contribution in groundwater contamination, have been explained in this paper. The remediation techniques developed by many researchers such as air sparging, in situ flushing, pump and treat method, permeable reactive barriers, surfactant-enhanced remediation and phytoremediation have also been discussed.