Groundwater quality assessment using water quality index and multivariate statistical analysis case study: East Matrouh, Northwestern coast, Egypt.

Abstract

Rapid urbanisation has had a significant negative influence on the water bodies that flow through and around urban areas. This study aims to evaluate the water quality and analyse the suitability for drinking and irrigation uses. This study envisaged assessing the water quality status of the groundwater using the pollution index of groundwater (PIG), ecological risk index (ERI) and multivariate statistical techniques, namely cluster analysis (CA) and principal component analysis (PCA), that were applied to differentiate the sources of water quality variation and determine the cause of pollution in the study area. Most groundwater is unsuitable for drinking and irrigation consumption, depending on analyses. PIG values indicated high pollution levels in the studied water body, rendering it unsuitable for any practical purpose. CA results showed the impact of surface water and treatment plant on groundwater. PCA was used to identify four important factors in the groundwater, including mineral and nutrient pollution, heavy metal pollution, organic pollution and faecal contamination. The deteriorating water quality of the groundwater was demonstrated to originate from vast sources of anthropogenic activities, especially municipal sewage discharge. Study wells had greater concentrations of Cl- and Na+ in their water because seawater flows into the aquifer system and mixes with the marine aquifer matrix. Thus, the current work reveals how to employ the PIG and multivariate statistical approaches to obtain more accessible and more meaningful information about the water quality of groundwater and to identify the sources of pollution.