Bacteriological Assessment of Some Selected Well Water

ABSTRACT
Water is a basic human need which is required in many operations especially in households.
However, this essential commodity in most cases does not meet the generally accepted safety standards. The total bacterial counts of the well water samples ranged from 2 x 103 Cfu/mL to 87.0 x 105 Cfu/mL with no sample having bacterial count within the limit of 100 Cfu/mL
allowed for potable water. The total bacterial count revealed that Eripa well water had the
highest total bacterial count of 87 x 105 cfu/ml while Poly Junction had the lowest total bacterial count of 2.0 x 103 cfu/ml. This indicated that Poly Junction well waters had the lowest bacterial indicators compared with all other well waters investigated in this study. The bacterial isolated according to morphological and biochemical characteristics include Nitrosospira species, Nitrosococcus nitrosus, Staphylococcus aureus, Nitrospina species and Streptococcus lactis. Majority of the bacterial confirmed in this study are responsible for gastro intestinal disorder, diarrhea, dysentery, Urinary trait infections especially when the water from these sources are consumed raw by humans. Also, the result of the study revealed that all the well water had significant number of fecal coliform population above the WHO set limit of 0 coliform per 100 mL of drinking. The presence of microorganisms in the water sample suggest faecal pollution, hence falls short of the standard of safe drinking water. However, it was observed that most of the wells examined were subject to various types of pollution from the environment. The microbial qualities of the evaluated well waters were averagely poor, and are certainly not fit for human consumption as they are of low quality threshold. This may be due to direct contamination by animal and human excreta and other anthropogenic activities and thus, require further purification to ensure their suitability for human utility.