Measures

Measures are essential to improve and protect the quality of water and soil. In case of urban pollution, these measures concern remediation or control of further contaminant transport. For regional, diffusive pollution attention focuses increasingly on protecting ecosystems and fresh water supply. Deltares plays an important role in the implementation, monitoring and modelling of these measures.

Preventive versus curative

Preventive measures are preferable to curative measures. These measures are of importance for pesticides and plant protection policies. This decision is more difficult for nutrients or heavy metals. On the long term, preventive measures can be useful but on a shorter term, curative measures could prevail because of historic contamination. Effects and costs of the measures can differ strongly at local and regional level. Finding the proper measures calls for sound evaluation. Deltares can give advice on this matter.

Measures and practice

We develop innovative ideas and test them in practice. For instance, we develop techniques to purify drain water: the Puridrain concept. Alternatively, we test the feasibility of purifying polder water at pumping stations. Furthermore, we import remediation techniques in The Netherlands: “Holland In-Situ Program”. These projects are often executed as a form of cooperation within subsidy programmes.

Measures and predictions

Deltares uses models to predict the effects of measures. We do this for short-term periods but also for periods of several decades. Transport of pollutants in surface water for instance, proceeds very fast while for groundwater this process takes place at a much slower pace. The magnitude and fate of the pollution is always a key issue, as is the possible threat for people and the environment. We provide solutions through our (ground) water quality models. We compare our predictions with field measurements, enabling us to improve our models further.

Measures and monitoring

Managers want to know if measures are indeed effective. For this purpose, Deltares develops monitoring programmes or formulates the data evaluation. We use modern and more traditional techniques side by side.