From 1,200 to 360 m³/hour: Delft’s Journey in Groundwater Conservation
Recently the Municipality of Delft decided to implement the 7th groundwater pumping reduction step for the large groundwater extraction in Delft. With this 7th reduction step of 120 m3 per hour the total pumping volume will now be 360 m3 per hour. Until 2017, the extraction rate was approximately 1,200 m3 per hour which equals to roughly 333 liters per second!
For many years groundwater was being used for production purposes at the DSM factory in Delft. This factory began increasingly using groundwater since 1916, mainly for cooling of the production process. In 2007 DSM indicated that they no longer need the groundwater and wanted to reduce/stop the abstraction. In 2009 the ownership of this groundwater abstraction was transferred from DSM to a governmental organization of which since 2015 only the Municipality of Delft remains part of this organization. This governmental organization has been reducing the the groundwater abstraction from 2017 on-wards.
Since 2015 Van Essen Instruments (VEI) has played a major part in the monitoring of the effects of this reduction. Currently VEI is involved in two large projects for the Delfland Water Authority and for the Municipality of Delft with a combined network of over 300 monitoring points.
Follow these links for more information:
- https://www.delft.nl/grondwater-oppompen-delft-noord (in Dutch)
- https://www.delft.nl/documenten-grondwateronttrekking (in Dutch)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM1UDa6tS3A (in Dutch)
- https://www.diver-hub.com/public/delft
- https://www.vanessen.com/management-groundwater-monitoring-network-haaglanden-the-netherlands/
- https://www.vanessen.com/visualizing-and-understanding-the-consequences-of-shutting-down-a-large-historical-groundwater-abstraction/
