Impact of Waste and Industrial Effluent on Ground Water Quality Index in Rabigh Area, Makkah Region, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The quality of surface water and groundwater has deteriorated as a result of increased industrialization, urbanization and agricultural practices during the last few decades. Contaminated groundwater can cause major health problems in humans, such as typhoid and other infections. Similar in the case of Rabigh Governorate, the groundwater is one of the main sources of water for domestic and agriculture purposes in its villages situated in western Saudi Arabia. Many factories have been established in Rabigh region in recent years and day to day input of numerous untreated/partially treated water resulting in major environmental problems, one of which is the low quality of groundwater causing serious environmental and health issues. The presented study discusses the ground water as the main available and usable source in extremely climatic condition of arid area of Saudi Arabia. The article proceeds with the brief introduction of ground water, its contamination sources and health hazards. For this, 13 water samples were from the randomly selected wells in Rabigh Governorate for quality examine. Water quality index analysis was conducted, which is a useful technique for fast assessment of the quality of any water resource. Various physical and chemical parameters of water quality index such as pH, temperature, conductivity, turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), total suspended solids (TSS), total solids (TS), dissolved oxygen (DO), arsenic and E. coli are measured and analyzed. The values of all groundwater samples are compared with the standard WHO permissible values. The water quality of the wells were classified into “good, poor, very poor and unsuitable for drinking” based on physico-chemical parameters. According to the observed study, water quality range (WQR) for 5 samples (38% of the samples) are of poor quality, 3 samples (23%) are recorded with a very poor quality and 5 samples (38%) are not suitable for drinking purpose due to presence of high conductivity and TDS values. After taking into consideration the presence of E. coli in 31% of the samples (n = 4), about 62% of the samples (n = 8) are not suitable for drinking purpose, only 23% (n = 3) samples are of poor quality and 15% (n = 2) are very poor quality. The findings reveal a decrease in water quality (unsuitable for drinking purpose) in 8 out of 13 collected samples. It is believed that waste and industrial activities have an impact on groundwater quality in the study area, however, a nationwide investigation should be conducted to validate this finding.