Evaluation of Water Quality and Heavy Metal Indices of Some Water Resources at Kafr El-Dawar Region, Egypt

Kafer El-Dawr is a major industrial and municipality
city at the western area of Nile Delta, northern Egypt.
Many factories are founded in Kafr El-Dawar region that
discharges many pollutant elements. Assessment of Water
quality is an important issue to know whether it is safe or
not for irrigation. So, twenty-five water samples were
collected from some water sources established in Kafer El-
Dawr region. These sources are Yarn and Fabric (YD),
Kafer El-Dawr Defshu (KDD), Dabora Abu Qir (DAD),
Dabora Defshu Canal (DC) and Abu Qir (AD). Whisker
box plot-median indicated that the heavy metals in the
waters of these drains can be classified according to their
concentration homogeneity into (a) wide spreadheterogeneous
included: Cr, Co and Cu. (b) Moderate
spread - moderately homogeneous included: Pb, Ni and
Zn, and (c) narrow spread - homogeneous included: Fe,
Cd, Li and Mn. The correlation study classified the heavy
metals into three groups: The positively highly correlation
between Pb and Cd, Co and Cr concluded that the water
resources have the same pollution source. Contrary, the
negatively highly correlated between (Pb_Mn), (Mn_Cu)
and (Co_Li) might be a tool to assume that these heavy
metals originated from different pollution resources.
Water quality for irrigation was evaluated by water
quality index (WQI), heavy metals pollution in short and
long-term use by conventional scale, heavy metals
contamination index (CI) and metal index (MI). According
to EPA the concentrations of heavy metals was generally
safe except cadmium for short-term use. For long-term
use, Co occupied the polluted class in all water resources
and Mn in water resource (KDD). The risky pollution was
found in Cd and Cr in all resources as well as Mn in
(DAD) and (AD) resources.
Water quality index (WQI) showed that these water
resources are good for irrigation utilization. Metal index
values cleared that drains or canal are seriously
threatened with metal pollution for irrigation usage
(MI>1). Only KDD drain has no heavy metal problems to
use in irrigation. The contamination index (CI) showed
that the water resources (YD), (DAD) and (AD) had
negative values of -5.67, -7.26 and -7.49, respectively. This
is indicated that these water resources are safe to use in
short-term run. Contrary, all studied water resources
were highly contaminated and cannot be use at the long
run.