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

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 cancause major health problems in humans, such as typhoid and other infections. Similar in the case ofRabigh Governorate, the groundwater is one of the main sources of water for domestic and agriculturepurposes in its villages situated in western Saudi Arabia. Many factories have been established inRabigh region in recent years and day to day input of numerous untreated/partially treated waterresulting in major environmental problems, one of which is the low quality of groundwater causingserious environmental and health issues. The presented study discusses the ground water as the mainavailable and usable source in extremely climatic condition of arid area of Saudi Arabia. The articleproceeds 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 qualityexamine. Water quality index analysis was conducted, which is a useful technique for fast assessmentof the quality of any water resource. Various physical and chemical parameters of water quality indexsuch 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. Thevalues of all groundwater samples are compared with the standard WHO permissible values. Thewater 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 poorquality and 5 samples (38%) are not suitable for drinking purpose due to presence of high conductivityand 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 areof 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 industrialactivities have an impact on groundwater quality in the study area, however, a nationwide investigationshould be conducted to validate this finding.