Assessment of Water and Sediments quality of Kitchener drain, Nile Delta, Egypt.

Abstract

Kitchener drain is considered one of the largest drains in the Nile delta. The current study aimed to assess water quality and level of some chemical and biological pollutants in both the water and sediments of Kitchener drain. The studied water quality parameters in-cluded nitrate (NO 3- ), phosphate (PO 43- ), total solids (TS), total suspended solids (TSS) and total dissolved solids (TDS), in addition, water and sediment samples were exposed to bacteriological analysis which included, total coliform (TC) bacteria, faecal coliform (FC) bacteria and Salmonella & Shigella (SS ) . The results showed that nitrate (NO 3- ) and phosphate (PO 43- ) concentrations in most sampling sides were within the permitted Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) limits for irrigation water. In addition, all the values of total suspended solids (TSS) and total dissolved solids concentrations (TDS) in El-Gharbia governorate were higher than the World Health Organization (WHO) permitted limits. Bacteriological results revealed that most sampling sites were contaminated with both TC and FC bacteria where, the counts of them in the water samples exceeded the 1,000 CFU/100 ml which is higher than the WHO limits. In addi-tion, the counts of studied organisms in all examined sediment samples were higher compared to water samples. Based on these results the water in Kitchener drain is considered unsuitable for domestic and agricultural pur-poses.