Towards sustainable drinking water supply in the Netherlands
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 seeks to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” by the year 2030 (UN, 2015). The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF (2017) estimated that in 2015 nearly 30% of the global population did not have access to a safely managed drinking water supply. Developments such as climate change and population growth put drinking water supply worldwide under pressure, even in areas where currently sufficient drinking water is still available. In the Netherlands, everyone has access to safe and affordable drinking water and adequate sanitation. However, water quality protection, water-use efficiency and protection of water-related ecosystems do pose sustainability challenges. These challenges, moreover, will be exacerbated in the future by climate change and other environmental and socio-economic developments.The research presented in this thesis brings into focus the sustainability challenges associated with drinking water supply on a local scale. The main objective of this research was twofold: to quantify the impact of measures to improve the hydrological sustainability of local drinking water abstraction, and to provide insight into the sustainability of local drinking water supply systems, by means of a sustainability assessment framework.Because abstraction of groundwater for drinking water supply sometimes affects nearby groundwater-dependent ecosystems, adaptation measures may be taken or considered to reduce this impact. In the first part of this research, quantitative hydrological methods were used to analyse the (potential) impact of local drinking water abstraction, adaptation measures and climate change, both historically and in the future.The Veluwe area is an important drinking water resource for the Netherlands. It is a glacial moraine complex containing large groundwater volumes. However, in some places, the abstraction of groundwater from this area has negatively impacted nearby groundwater-dependent ecosystems. To compensate for the adverse effects of the drinking water abstraction near the town of Epe, groundwater has been artificially recharged since 1998 by infiltration of surface water near the abstraction. The current research evaluated the impact of 20 years of managed aquifer recharge (MAR) by infiltration using time series analysis and water quality modelling. The results demonstrate that the infiltration has increased groundwater levels near the infiltration, but has not significantly contributed to restoration of groundwater levels in the nearby groundwater-dependent ecosystem. Additionally, no significant deterioration of groundwater quality was found over the study period.A second – potential – adaptation measure studied was redistribution of abstraction volumes with the aim of reducing impacts on a nearby groundwater-dependent ecosystem. Because climate change and other future developments are likely to influence the availability of groundwater resources for drinking water, this research compared the impact of this potential adaptation measure to the projected impact of climate change scenarios. Here again, the focus was on the Veluwe area of the Netherlands. Findings indicate that in an area with a slowly responding large aquifer and without a surface water system, climate change is likely to cause rising groundwater levels, despite the projected increase in summer dryness. This impact may even exceed the impact of redistribution of abstraction volumes.The second part of this research explored the sustainability challenges associated with local drinking water supply systems, given projected future developments, such as climate change and growth in drinking water demand. Recognising the need for an integrated approach, the full range of sustainability characteristics and challenges that local drinking water supply may face were identified and elaborated in a sustainability assessment. To identify the sustainability issues for drinking water supply, three cases were analysed. One case related to a short-term event, that is, the 2018 summer drought in the Netherlands. The two other cases concerned long-term phenomena, that is, changes in water quality and growth in drinking water demand. The sustainability issues identified in the cases were compared to globally recognised challenges in sustainable drinking water supply. This resulted in a set of hydrological, technical and socio-economic characteristics of a sustainable local drinking water supply system.The sustainability characteristics were elaborated into a locally oriented sustainability assessment framework, based on multi-criteria analysis. The developed framework was used to analyse the projected impact of future developments and adaptation measures on various drinking water abstractions in the Netherlands. In these cases, use of the framework resulted in a clearer picture of the positive impacts as well as trade-offs involved in the studied measures. Such results can support more transparent decision-making, that carefully balances relevant sustainability aspects.This research revealed that climate change and a complex hydrogeology may amplify or counteract the effectiveness of measures to reduce the hydrological impact of drinking water abstraction. This highlights the need for local hydrological knowledge and use of high-resolution modelling when considering any such adaptation measures. Additionally, the cases analysed made clear that, while it is important to reduce the local hydrological impact of drinking water abstraction, hydrological facts and figures alone do not determine whether an adaptation measure will increase the sustainability of a local drinking water supply. To guide decisions on the required local adaptation measures, this research offered a sustainability assessment framework. Use of that framework provides the broad overview so essential for sustainability decision-making. The framework establishes a set of hydrological, technical and socio-economic sustainability characteristics for local drinking water supply systems. The analyses also identified four main adaptation strategies. These were elaborated into potential local adaptation measures for addressing local challenges. Analysis of these provided insight into potential positive impacts and trade-offs involved in the adaptation strategies in relation to the sustainability characteristics. The research additionally showed that temporal, spatial and organisational cross-scale interactions strongly affect the sustainable development of local drinking water supply.It is recommended that the sustainability assessment be applied in other contexts. Based on the local situation and data availability, suitable indicators can be selected to elaborate and quantify criteria describing the sustainability characteristics of a local drinking water supply system in other settings. This will further promote the general applicability of the presented approach to sustainability assessment.
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| Format: | Doctoral thesis biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
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Wageningen University
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| Subjects: | Life Science, |
| Online Access: | https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/towards-sustainable-drinking-water-supply-in-the-netherlands |
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