Full Description

Since the new Groundwater Catchment Regulation in 2002 was publishedin the Province of Quebec, it is now mandatory for municipalities todescribe the wellhead catchment areas to protect their water sources, aconsiderable challenge for small municipalities. Utilities with groundwatersources are thus required to describe the characteristics of their aquifersand to identify the entire zone of contribution (ZOC) for wells as well asthe groundwater time-of-travel boundaries.In many small municipalities of southern Quebec that use groundwater asthe primary source of drinking water, agriculture is an important sector forthe local economy (MENV, 2003). It is consequently important to assessthe impact of agricultural pressures ongroundwater quality to promote betterpractices in locations close to themunicipal wells. This investigation setsas a research hypothesis that thequality of drinking water provided bymunicipal wells is under influence ofintensive agricultural practices aroundthe wells. The study area includesseven administration regions of theProvince of Quebec, that is about 600municipal wells. ZOC for wells weregenerated based on a local watershedgeneration method from a digitalelevation model. Thisregional analysis is different from theapproach used in other studiesconducted before because it proposesthe application of a specific spatial unit(ZOC) for each well instead of usingfixed radius (Tesoriero and Voss, 1997;Rupert, 2003; Nolan et al., 2002; Rasmussenand Rouleau, 2003). Includes 10 references, figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 11/01/2005 Number of Pages: 6File Size: 1 file , 2.5 MB