Evaluating Water Quality of Village Ponds using Water Quality Index and Multivariate Statistical Techniques: A Case Study of Rohtak Block, Haryana, India

Pond water pollution has become a menace caused by various anthropogenic factors such as agricultural runoff, industrial waste and domestic wastewater. This study aims to assess the water quality and pollution levels in rural village ponds of Rohtak block, Haryana state, India. To assess the water quality, a total of 34 samples from 22 villages and one from the Tilyar city lake were collected. Various physico-chemical parameters were determined using standard methods. Total dissolved solids (TDS) were varied from 105 to 4254 mg/L, maximum was recored at S5 site (Shimli village). The 30% water samples for TDS, 62% for total hardness (TH) and 56% for Mg2+ surpass the prescribed limits of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). The dissolved oxygen (DO) and biological oxygen demand (BOD) were ranged from 1.0 to 4.5 mg/L and 1.6 to 34.4 mg/L respectively, maximum recorded at S1 site (Sunderpur village). The 90% of the samples have very low DO (> 4 mg/L) and have higher BOD (< 2 mg/L) indicating a high organic load in the ponds. The water quality index (WQI) shows that 82% of samples were not fit for human consumption. Multivariate statistical technique, principal component analysis (PCA) reported that the first four principal components (PCs) accounted for 77.46% of the variance in water samples. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) formed up four different clusters. It can be concluded that the pond water quality of the block has deteriorated and domestic wastewater treatment needs to be done by district administration.