Regional assessment of groundwater quality for drinking purpose

Environ Monit Assess. 2012 May;184(5):3063-75. doi: 10.1007/s10661-011-2171-y. Epub 2011 Jul 5.

Abstract

Owing to limited surface water during a long-term drought, this work attempted to locate clean and safe groundwater in the Choushui River alluvial fan of Taiwan based on drinking-water quality standards. Because aquifers contained several pollutants, multivariate indicator kriging (MVIK) was adopted to integrate the multiple pollutants in groundwater based on drinking- and raw-water quality standards and to explore spatial uncertainty. According to probabilities estimated by MVIK, safe zones were determined under four treatment conditions--no treatment; ammonium-N and iron removal; manganese and arsenic removal; and ammonium-N, iron, manganese, and arsenic removal. The analyzed results reveal that groundwater in the study area is not appropriate for drinking use without any treatments because of high ammonium-N, iron, manganese, and/or arsenic concentrations. After ammonium-N, iron, manganese, and arsenic removed, about 81.9-94.9% of total areas can extract safe groundwater for drinking. The proximal-fan, central mid-fan, southern mid-fan, and northern regions are the excellent locations to pump safe groundwater for drinking after treatment. Deep aquifers of exceeding 200 m depth have wider regions to obtain excellent groundwater than shallow aquifers do.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Drinking Water / chemistry*
  • Environmental Monitoring*
  • Groundwater / chemistry*
  • Taiwan
  • Water Pollutants, Chemical / analysis*
  • Water Pollution, Chemical / statistics & numerical data

Substances

  • Drinking Water
  • Water Pollutants, Chemical