The Central Ground Water Board's pre-monsoon 2023 samples from Botad found salinity (high tds) and fluoride above the limit BIS sets for drinking water in at least one well. It does not mean every borewell is affected, but it does mean yours is worth testing.
Limit: EC over 3,000 µS/cm, roughly TDS over 1,900 mg/l.
Water tastes salty or brackish, scales pipes and geysers, and is unfit to drink untreated.
What to do: Reverse osmosis (RO) removes dissolved salts; recharging fresh rainwater dilutes salinity in the aquifer over time.
Limit: over 1.5 mg/l.
Long use stains and pits teeth (dental fluorosis) and can stiffen bones and joints (skeletal fluorosis).
What to do: RO or activated alumina filters remove fluoride; rainwater, which has almost none, is a safe drinking source when stored clean.
13.92% of the 632 groundwater samples CGWB tested in Gujarat in 2023 had more than 1.5 mg/l of fluoride.
Rainwater carries almost no dissolved salts or fluoride. Stored clean, it is good drinking water, and recharged into the ground it slowly freshens the aquifer your borewell draws from.
Not without testing. In the Central Ground Water Board's 2023 samples from Botad, at least one was over the BIS drinking water limit for salinity (high tds) and fluoride. Water from one borewell can be fine while the next is not, so test yours, and treat it with RO if it fails.
It varies from bore to bore. Some 2023 samples in Botad had electrical conductivity over 3,000 µS/cm, which is roughly TDS over 1,900 mg/l. BIS sets 500 mg/l as acceptable for drinking and 2,000 mg/l as the most allowed where there is no other source.
Yes, in places: some 2023 samples in Botad had more than 1.5 mg/l of fluoride, the BIS limit. Across Gujarat, 13.92% of 632 samples were over the limit.
Get it tested at a NABL-accredited lab or the local Public Health Engineering department. An RO purifier removes salts and fluoride. Harvesting rainwater for drinking, and recharging it into the ground, also helps, because rain has almost no dissolved salts or fluoride.
Source: Annual Ground Water Quality Report 2024 (Report on Groundwater Quality of Shallow Aquifers in India 2024), Central Ground Water Board, tables of districts over the limit for salinity and fluoride. Other contaminants such as nitrate, iron, arsenic and uranium are tested too but are not shown here yet, so a contaminant missing from this page does not mean it is absent.