**3. Water quality determinant**

The selection of significant water quality parameters is vital and key to having good representation of all indicators of water quality [28, 29]. Water quality parameters commonly used by various researchers include dissolved oxygen, total phosphates, temperature, pH, turbidity, chemical oxygen demand, fecal coliform, total solids, biochemical oxygen demand and nitrates [30–32]. The weight associated with each parameter is based on its respective standards and the magnitude of the assigned weight indicates the parameter's significance and impact on the index. Below is the weighting factors assigned to some of the water quality parameters (**Table 2**).


**Table 2.**

*Water quality parameters and weight factors.*
