Assessing groundwater vulnerability to pollution to promote sustainable urban and rural development

Groundwater resource management should be integrated with regional land-use planning. The objectives of such planning should respond to regional and long-term design needs, which can maximize human-life quality, achieve a balance between ecological and engineering approaches to land-use alteration, and lead to sustainable groundwater resources. Regional plans should be designed in harmony with natural amenities, restrictions of the environment, and water needs so as to provide adequate rural amenities to urban areas and adequate urban amenities to rural areas. Maximum efficiency of these remediation measures can be attained in urban areas only if hydrological barriers which aim to preserve fresh water resources from pollution are simultaneously emplaced with greenbelts which not only aim to promote ground vegetation and soil stability, but also reduce the input of potential pollutants. Similarly, in rural areas abstraction of fresh groundwater should also be paired with aquifer recharge. From this study it can be stated that only integrated hydrological, environmental, and land-use measures could offset the present malaise of inharmonious land-use, water resources, and socio-economic planning with balanced design needs, in order to achieve integrated urban/rural land-use for sustainable groundwater resources planning. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.