Fresh water is a rare commodity (3%). Untreated drinking water even more so (<0,6%).
It is a natural heritage resource and a common good. It is therefore essential to protect and manage it wisely.

Protection

It is obviously important to protect groundwater catchment works used to supply a population with drinking water from accidental and/or bacteriological pollution. However, it is equally important to protect the aquifers from diffuse pollution via the catchments that intersect them so that they remain sustainable not only for today’s users but for future generations as well.

The protection of groundwater catchment works requires:

• Implementing protection perimeters in the immediate vicinity and further afield
• Securing the structures

The protection of aquifers requires:

• Establishing the exact extent of the aquifers both geologically and geographically speaking
• Identifying the polluting pressures in the area
• Determining their vulnerabilities to specific factors
• Mapping the risks and implementing measures to mitigate them

Polluting pressures and risk mapping (document IDEES-EAUX)

Management

To ensure good aquifer management you need to know:

• How the aquifer is recharged and if it might be exploited too much?
• Climate change: a reality or a hoax? Now? Tomorrow? Here or elsewhere?

To get clear answers, INTERFACE-EAU can set up monitoring tools that are adapted to the region and the aquifer in question. These will provide reliable and indisputable logs over time of flow rates, water levels, conductivity, dating, pesticides, nitrates, etc…

Example of level monitoring on a hydrogeological cycle