Public supply well fields as a valuable groundwater quality monitoring network

“Groundwater is an extremely valuable and reliable source of drinking water for public and individual supply, which is becoming extremely vulnerable to human interference because of its hydrogeological structure, the increasing demographical pressure and the multitude and variety of anthropogenic activities that threaten its quality. During the last decades, many countries have set up extensive national groundwater quality monitoring networks, in order to preserve and protect drinking water resources. The specific goals of such monitoring networks include: determining the current quality of the groundwater, identifying trends in groundwater quality, and defining the regional natural background concentrations in groundwater. The first goal is usually easy to achieve with a recently
developed monitoring network, but the resulting time periods are usually insufficient to achieve the other two goals. A monitoring network that is available in most countries and which can work towards all three goals simultaneously because of widespread spatial distribution and long periods of time is the monitoring network for public supply well fields (PSWFs). These well fields are monitored on a regular basis as an integral part of the quality surveillance of national drinking water supply. The monitoring network, which is operational in the Netherlands since 1898, is used in this thesis to address, among others, the three goals mentioned above. The hydrochemical status quo and development of trends in raw groundwater used for drinking water purposes is first established for
individual PSWFs and subsequently upscaled to groundwater bodies (GWB) on a national scale.”

(Citaat: Mendizabal, I. – Public supply well fields as a valuable groundwater quality monitoring network)