Assessment of the quality of drinking water of the Republic of Kalmykia by trace element composition

The article presents the data of the environmental assessment of the degree of contamination of drinking waters of Kalmykia. The assessment based on analyses of drinking waters of the republic’s districts, monitoring of drinking sources for 10 years, calculation of pollution coefficients. Today, 45 settlements of the republic, where 70.2% of the population of Kalmykia lives, provided with centralized and mixed drinking water supply. Residents of 140 settlements with a population of 60 thousand people (20.5% of the total population) in 4 districts (Iki-Burul, Priyutnensky, Oktyabrsky, Yashkulsky, Lagansky districts) are provided with imported water and delivered by special water carriers, water is delivered by rail from Dagestan to Ulan-Hall station. As representative indicators, the ratio of calculations of the values of excess of MPC by macro- and microelement composition was chosen. The results obtained rank the SRM by water quality class as, very clean in three rural municipalities (SRM), moderately dirty make up the majority - nine SRM, polluted and dirty - three SRM. This assessment of water quality coincides with the assessment of water exceeding the standards for individual indicators. A high value of this indicator indicates possible sources of pollution.