Recharging aquifers with water we used to waste
Managed aquifer recharge puts water back into the ground on purpose, where it is stored and cleaned on its way through the soil. Treated wastewater, industrial effluent and harvested rainwater can all be recharged, but they carry contaminants of emerging concern (pharmaceuticals, pesticides, PFAS) that conventional treatment does not remove and that move easily through groundwater.
AQUICIRC asks how to recharge these waters safely: how much water the aquifer stores and gives back, and how much of each contaminant it removes on the way.
What we set out to do
Follow the contaminants
Track how pharmaceuticals, pesticides, PFAS and other contaminants of emerging concern move and break down in aquifers recharged with treated wastewater and other unconventional water.
Model recharge before changing it
Build flow and reactive transport models that predict water quality and guard coastal aquifers against seawater intrusion.
Test better designs
Measure what permeable reactive materials and natural attenuation add to recharge systems in very different climates and geologies.
Six sites, from Lieshout to Cape Town
Each site recharges an aquifer with a different kind of water, in a different climate. Select a site on the map to read about it.
- Lieshout-caseNetherlands
- GROW pilot, KinrooiBelgium
- Besòs river basinSpain
- Llobregat river basinSpain
- Wadi KhairatTunisia
- Atlantis & Cape FlatsSouth Africa
Map tiles and data from OpenStreetMap, loaded from openstreetmap.org when the map comes into view.
Latest news
- The AQUICIRC website is live
The project website, deliverable D6.3, is online at aquicirc.eu. It will carry updates from the six case-study sites, the stakeholder workshops, and every publication, dataset and model the …
