Ground Water Quality Assessment in Paper Mill Effluent Irrigated Area - Using Multivariate Statistical Analysis

Abstract

Paper mill effluent while flowing, percolates through soil and slowly mixes with ground water bodies (Open well), water samples were collected from three stations (S1, S2 and S3) in and around paper mill. This paper represents the characteristics of ground water quality and the effect of paper mill effluent, which is using recycled water for irrigation and domestic purpose. Cluster analysis (CA), principal component analysis (PCA) and multidimensional scale plot (MDS) appear were employed to evaluate the tropic status of water quality for three monitoring stations. High pollution load was observed in the ground water bodies due to continuous flow of effluent near the ground water sources. Effluent water consists of 3400 mg/l suspended solids. However, pH varied from 5.5-7.6. The biochemical oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand ranged from 2-780 and 60 - 1520 mg/l respectively. SAR, RSC and SSP level was high from S2 and S3, both were unsuitable for both domestic and irrigation purposes. An elevated coliform bacterial count indicates that these water samples S2 and S3 were not suitable for domestic purpose. The dendrogram of the effluent water quality parameters evidently indicate that Maruthi Paper mill does not meet nominal National standard set by central pollution control board to discharge in agricultural field