Geothermal water in Bakreshwar-Tantoli region in West Bengal, India: Implications on water quality for irrigation and drinking purposes

Groundwater becomes more critical for drinking and irrigation purposes due to reduced surface water supplies and contamination of these sources. Knowing the quality of underground water is vital to the protection of public health and sustainable water resource development. The goal of this study is, therefore, to assess the suitability of groundwater for drinking and irrigation purposes in the Bakreshwar-Tantaloi hot springs in West Bengal, India. This study evaluates the quality of water produced from 7 different geothermal hot springs by investigating its chemical concentration. The physicochemical parameters were examined for the water samples. The suitability of groundwater for drinking purposes was measured by contrasting the chemical concentrations with the WHO standards and also computing and comparing the Water Quality Index (WQI) value with recommended norms. The concentrations of Ca2+, Mg2+, Cl−, SO42−, and NO3− are within the WHO (2011) and BIS (2012) tolerable limit. Statistical analyses are used to reveal patterns and groups from the physiochemical dataset of groundwater samples. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and factor analysis identify the source for groundwater parameters. The correlation matrix and scatter plot matrix give the relationship among major chemical ions of water samples. Dendrogram defines the relationship between physicochemical variables and groups them into strong to weak correlations among water components.