Quality Assessment of Harvested Rainwater for Domestic Uses

Despite continuous monitoring of public water supplies by governmental agencies, little is done for monitoring the water quality of cisterns and tanks receiving rainwater. For this reason, it is very important to evaluate the quality of rainwater collected and stored in these cisterns and storage tanks. In the present work, a comprehensive survey was carried out to cover four governorates in northern region of Jordan, where rainwater collection for domestic use is practiced on regular basis. Ninety samples of harvested rain water from various storage tanks within these four governorates were collected and analyzed for different quality parameters (pH, alkalinity, Hardness, Turbidity, TDS, COD, NO3, NH4, PO4, Pb, Fe, Cr and biological contaminations). The results of the analysis were compared with valid quality guidelines to evaluate its suitability for domestic uses. The resulted data indicate that water quality in these tanks and cisterns varies depending on location, on catchment area, and on the availability of public sanitary systems. It was concluded that collected rainwater is unsuitable for drinking purpose while it could be used for irrigation within in houses.