Geospatial evaluation of groundwater quality in an industrialized district of Haryana, India, using an integrated approach

Gurugram district is undergoing a phase of rapid industrialization and urbanization leading to immense increase in anthropogenic activities. Thus, it is imperative to identify the possible impacts of these activities on human and environmental health. Besides evaluating the groundwater quality, delineation of the problematic zones and categorizing parameters that may pose severe health risks to residents, is equally important. For a holistic assessment of this area, groundwater quality results were integrated with pollution indices, multivariate statistics and geospatial technology to give a true indication of the potability of water. Various water quality indices were taken to comparatively evaluate the water quality results. Based on the groundwater quality index (GWQI), 47.62% of the samples were identified as of good quality, while 52.38% exhibited poor quality. Another specific index, namely, Heavy metal pollution index (HPI), showed that 33.33% of the samples had medium and 66.67% had a high level of pollution. Besides, these two indices degree of contamination (Cd), was also used to check for the contamination levels, which demonstrated that a significant number of samples (90.48%) were highly contaminated posing significant health hazards to the local population. Thereafter, PCA was done to identify the primary influencers of groundwater geochemistry which turned out to be hardness, calcium, magnesium, dissolved solids, lead, nickel and fluoride. The results so obtained, were mapped using geospatial technology that depicted that groundwater quality in the west and southeast zones was severely affected. The tangible results of the study are expected to help government authorities and decision-makers to devise a defined strategy for future health risk assessment and further assist in protecting this vulnerable resource.