Impact of Zinc-Lead Mining on Groundwater and Surface Water at Agalagu Alike in Ikwo LGA of Ebonyi State

Physicochemical and heavy metals analyses were carried out on water samples from four different sampling points to evaluate the effect of Lead/Zinc mining on water quality. The location of the sampling points was Agalagu Alike in Ikwo LGA of Ebonyi State. Water samples collected were labeled SW, BH1, BH2 and Control. The samples collected were examined for Temperature, pH, Chemical Oxygen Demand, Total Dissolved Solids, Dissolved Oxygen, Biological Oxygen Demand, Total Suspended Solids, Electrical Conductivity, Microbial Load, and lead/zinc as the heavy metal of major interest. The result was subjected to relevant statistical analysis like Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t–Test, and significantly different means were separated using F-LSD at 5% level of probability. The analyses indicated that there are some levels of contaminations in the water. From the result of this research, for physicochemical parameters, it was observed that levels of temperature, pH, EC, TDS, TSS, Alkalinity, Cl, Mg, and BOD were all recorded within the acceptable limits in all the samples, with the exception of samples BH1 and BH2 which also had a pH of 5.8 and 6.0 respectively during the dry season of 2019. Turbidity and COD were found to be very high in almost all the samples tested, ranging between 9.3mg/L – 98.2mg/L for Turbidity, and 145.0mg/L – 738.0mg/L for COD. All the samples showed high concentration of Pb with a range of 0.02mg/L – 0.21mg/L across the samples. The concentration of Zn was found to have the range 0.10mg/L to 0.36mg/L, which is within the standard of the regulatory body. The Researcher strongly recommend thorough efforts by the mining companies licensed to operate in that area and the government agencies to provide alternative sources of well treated drinking water, since most of the tested water samples are already contaminated.