Suez, operating the drinking water supply service of Hyeres-les-Palmiers city since 2012, developed AquaRenova project, a program of abstraction control and restoration of natural resource, leading to a sober economic development.
As part of this project, a MAR scheme has been implemented in order to restore the water quality of the main aquifer supplying the Hyeres-les-Palmiers city. The scheme consists in infiltrating surface water through two infiltration basins into the Gapeau coastal alluvial aquifer. The surface water is abstracted from the Roubaud stream during high flow conditions and brought to the MAR scheme (Figure 1). The objective of the MAR system is to fight against saltwater intrusion from the Mediterranean sea due to water pumping for drinking water supply. Groundwater is abstracted upstream from two pumping wells clusters (Père Eternel and Golf Hotel clusters).
More information is available here : https://www.aquarenova.fr/
The MAR components of the Aquarenova system are summarized below:
- Capture zone: Roubaud River Water
- Pre-treatment: none, system shut down in case of exceedances of specific parameters
- Recharge: two infiltration basins
- Subsurface: coastal alluvial aquifer
- Recovery: drinking water wells 400 m upstream of the infiltration basins
- Post-treatment: chlorination at Père Eternel water plant
- End use: drinking water
The MAR scheme is manually and automatically monitored using a very complete system: the abstraction point on the surface stream is continuously monitored for water quality and potential pollution alert. Several wells are continuously monitored for water levels and electrical conductivity measurements in order to properly manage the MAR system on a real time basis. Monthly field campaigns are conducted for water levels and salinity vertical diagraphy measurements in order to follow saline intrusion movement.
In the frame of SMART-Control, the already existing monitoring system will be extended to account for real-time data transfer to study the saltwater wedge on the left bank of the Gapeau river, which dynamics is so far only poorly understood.