Groundwater is a vital source of domestic, industrial, agricultural uses in arid areas where precipitation and fresh surface water are limited.With the rapid development of industry and population growth in developing countries like China, human activity induced groundwater over-exploitation and pollution have become more and more serious. It is reported that there are as many as 2.8 million wells in China 1 and the heavy groundwater extraction has caused many problems such as groundwater level drop, salt water intrusion, ground surface depression, etc. In addition, nitrate pollution caused by agricultural activities has also been widely reported in many parts of China 2-6 . All these reports have indicated that China faces a serious situation of groundwater pollution.These years, many water quality assessment methods have been proposed 7,8 . Water quality index (WQI) is a relatively easy tool and it has been widely used all over the world for the quality assessment of groundwater and surface water. Bordalo et al. 9 used a modified nine-parameter Scottish water quality index to assess the monthly water quality of the Douro river, an internationally shared river, during a 10-year period (1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001), while Chaturvedi et al. 10 assessed the groundwater quality near an industrial area of Balrampur city, India.Zhongning Shikong industrial area is located in the north bank of the Yellow river, Zhongning County, covering an area of 54 km 2 . There are several metal smelting plants in this area such as Ningxia Tianyuan Manganese Company Limited