Five - point guidelines for urban development with groundwater dimension

Guideline 1
Use of `Hydrological Design Principles' As A Basis for Making Spatial Planning Decisions or Design of Land Use Patterns.

1. The Catchment Planning Approach This approach aims to assemble land uses or activities with compatible environmental requirements in each catchment area or drainage basin and to prevent peak discharges. This is achieved by allocating land use profiles to each catchment area and by taking measures to maintain or increase the water storage capacity within the catchment areas. In the catchment area management plans, attention is to be paid to both water quality and quantity aspects, which are to be managed with the ultimate goal of achieving an ecological balance with the landuse activities.
   
   
2. The Location Approach This approach aims to order the various land uses and activities within each catchment area so that they affect each other as little as possible. Land uses that place greater demands on water quality are located upstream of more polluting ones, while locating more vulnerable uses in areas of groundwater seepage implies placing certain requirements on activities in the infiltration areas. Clean land use activities should be practised in the infiltration areas.
   
   
3. The Buffering Approach This approach is used to allow land uses with incompatible environmental requirements to co-exist. A well-known example at the local level is the hydrological buffering of natural sites from surrounding agricultural land. This can be achieved through appropriate design and management measures, which can be relatively easy and quick to implement.

Guideline 2
Establishing An Integrated Approach To Land Use Activities, Groundwater Systems And The Environment.

1. Water Storage, Habitat Creation and Natural Water Treatment combined with new Urban Development. In various places where the abstraction of drinking water causes damage to nature, water may be abstracted elsewhere instead. In some cases, groundwater abstraction should be stopped in favour of riverbank filtration. Water from the river can be pumped into the ground under the banks and later abstracted when it has been sufficiently filtered by passing through the sand and clay in the sub-soil.
   
   
2. Raising storage capacity in the river basin through habitat creation, landscaping and establishing outdoor recreation areas.

Guideline 3
Ensuring enough room for water: 'Catch water where it falls'
Retaining water helps prevent flooding. In the areas around the main rivers measures to improve the safety can go hand in hand with habitat creation. Raising the water storage capacity by lowering the ground level of the river fore lands and / or moving the dikes further back offer further opportunities for nature development. Widening ditches and watercourses and raising the drainage level can further increase the water storage capacity. Rainwater, for example, can be infiltrated into the soil instead of being drained away as quickly as possible to the sewer, while planting woodlands and less intensive drainage of agriculture land help to hold water in the soil for longer. A beneficial effect of giving water more room is the greater opportunity it presents to make use of natural filtration and water purification processes. Natural water systems have the ability to remove the nutrients from surface water; nitrogen compounds are broken down and phosphate is fixed. As an added bonus of retaining water, natural treatment can in future play a more important role because area-based measures will continue to be necessary, despite a stronger focus on tackling pollution at source.

Guideline 4
Controlling Excessive Subsurface Contaminants Load And Ensuring Sufficient Clean water - now and in future

1. Defining source protection zone for priority control of surface contaminants load. Water pollution problems can be partially minimised or controlled by delineating source protection zones around major groundwater catchment areas at regular intervals and eliminating pollution within these zones.
   
   
2. Reducing contaminants load in selective areas, especially where aquifer is highly vulnerable, by appropriate planning provisions or mitigation measures. To moderate the subsurface contamination to acceptable levels by considering the vulnerability of local aquifers to pollution, land use planning to reduce potential pollution sources, and selecting controls over effluent discharges and other existing pollution sources.
   
   
3. Planning waste water treatment / landfill disposal sites taking account of groundwater interests and impacts.

Guideline 5
Institutional Framework and Social Dimension
To improve groundwater management, a strong institutional framework is prerequisite, and the ideal framework would include legislation:

1. To provide clear definition of water use rights (separate from land ownership) through granting of licences and levying of charges for groundwater exploitation in a specified manner.
   
   
2. To prescribe that the discharge of liquid effluents to the ground, the land disposal of solid-wastes, and other potentially polluting activities need legal consent / or planning approval.