Site-adepted groundwater protective land use
Baden-Württemberg’s central regulation for the requirements and settlement of claims in water protection areas (SchALVO) - is it an alternative?
Summary of a lecture of Joachim Kiefer at the University of Bonn on June 9th 2005
In the federal State of Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany a guideline abbreviated “SchALVO” governs the requirements and the settlement of claims from land management in water protection areas. According to the second amendment of the guideline, protection areas are classified in three categories depending on the nitrate content of the groundwater or its temporal development.
Within so called “nitrate remediation areas” and within “nitrate problem areas” the farmers have to take special culture-specific management measures to reduce nitrate leaching. The compliance with the requirements is supervised by soil samples in autumn. The remaining so called “normal areas” cover 62 % of the agriculturally used land in water protection areas of the country. Here most of the substantial restrictions of land management were reduced. The danger is that the farmers in these areas partly might revert to not groundwater-careful man-agement ways which would cause increasing nitrate emissions.
The nitrate concentration in the groundwater is slightly declining since 1994 but despite the SchALVO in equal measures within and beyond the water protection areas. The water supply companies therefore demand a revision of the SchALVO in the sense of sustainable, regionally adapted groundwater protection. The joint monitoring of the groundwater quality demonstrates the willingness of the water suppliers to cooperate with the authorities.
