Determination of Pollution's Sources for some Raw Water Supplies at Basrah Governorate

Abstract

 In Iraq, water resources suffered from salinity, declining in flow rate and pollution. Recently, these problems have reached critical point where people in Basrah governorate depended on desalinized water. Therefore, the objective of this research is evaluating seasonal water quality of some raw water supplies in Basrah governorate using Principal Component and Factor Analyses (PCA/FA). Raw water samples had been collected from nine water supplies (Braadhyia; Garma; Shatt Al-Arab; Mhejran; Hamdan balad; Hamdan bridge; Jubaila; Maqal and Zubair) for analyzing fourteen parameters along the period from January 2017 to December 2020. We used varimax as a rotation method for interpretation the results of PCA/FA. Depending upon scree plots, we extract three factors for Winter, Summer and Autumn and two factors for Spring only. Rotated factors are named as follows: The first factor represents pollution with sea water  due to reduction in river discharge which allowed a salt-water wedge to penetrate into the Shatt Al-Arab River. The second factor represents pollution with biotic and a biotic particulates. Water temperature contributes in variance of the third factor for Summer and Autumn seasons which reflects disturbance of climate conditions. pH contributes in variance of the third factor for Summer season only which considers as an important factor for efficiency of both coagulation and chlorination. The alkalinity contributes in variance of the third factor for Winter and Autumn seasons. It must be known to calculate the quantities of alum and other coagulant aids to be added in water treatment.