Impact of Urbanization on Groundwater and Microbial Quality Brooke Blankenship Wichita State University Biology Colloquium May 6, 2014 Groundwater, a valuable natural resource, serves as a source essential drinking water worldwide. Groundwater may be polluted due to human activities, but is considered much cleaner than surface water. In areas of high population density, the rate of groundwater removal is faster than the rate of replenishment. This article will cover the article Impact of Urbanization on Microbiological Quality of Groundwater - A Case Study of Visakhapatnam City, AP. India as a focus and introduction, discuss the effect of urbanization on groundwater, identify sources of water pollution and suggest methods of improvement. In India, water quality is increasingly deteriorating. Fecal pollution can lead to the introduction of intestinal pathogens such as Salmonella, Shigella, E. coli, Campylobacter and Vibrio cholera. These can cause diseases that cause gastroenteritis, dysentery, cholera, typhoid fever or meningitis. Polluted water may also contain viral pathogens (e.g. hepatitis). Drinking water monitoring plays an important role because it reveals water quality and risks of epidemics. The importance of this study was to evaluate water quality and thus demonstrate the need to prevent water pollution along with disinfection of groundwater before human consumption (Chandran 2013). For the study, 25 groundwater samples were observed to measure microbial pollution and check for the presence of pathogens. The two common microbes targeted were fecal coliforms (FC) and fecal streptococci (FS). The specific objective of the study was to find not only the amount of each of them in the water samples, but also the ratio... half of paper... chapter/001714.pdfReddy, RK (2009). General microbiology. New age 1, 1-6 http://water.columbia.edu/files/2012/06/FICCI_CWC_IndiaWaterCrisisPaper.pdf Perveen, S., Sen, R., Ghosh, M.(2012) The worsening water crisis in India. FICCI, 3-19 http://www.aces.edu/waterquality/articles/0121001/0121001.pdf Hairston, J. (2001) Urbanization and how it affects water quality. Alabama coop, 1-3Elledge, M.F., McClatchey, M. (2013) India, urban sanitation, and the sanitation challenge. RTI Press 9.13, 1-4 http://www.rti.org/pubs/rb-0006-1309-elledge.pdf http://orbit.dtu.dk/fedora/objects/orbit:113168/datastreams/file_9826908/ contents Gozdereliler, E. (2012) Groundwater bacteria: diversity, activity and physiology of pesticide degradation at low concentrations. Geus 49-51California wastewater recyclinghttp://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/urban2/Urbwater.pdf