Contribution to the drafting of a management plan for surface water quality in the Haine catchment

A management plan specific of each individual river basin seems the only worthy outcome for an efficient management of surface waters. It is the reason why the Direction des Eaux de Surface have planned to further develop the current management plans by considering the catchment of the Haine, whose basin has been heavily impacted by industrialization, is now changing rapidly, and for which a wealth of information is available and many possibilities for local action exist. Because of its involvement in such fields of research in the recent past, the Direction des Eaux de Surface has gained the necessary expertise to carry out such projects. In that context, cartography tools appear to be of primary importance not only to obtain a synthetic and visual representation on the various elements considered in the management plan, but also to help in the management of data pertaining to each basin (Arc Info and Arc View software packages).

Step I.1. : Collection of all the data needed to draft the management plan.
Step I.2. : Consensus on the contents of the plan.

The management plan will at least consider the following aspects : land use, protected areas, quality objectives, water quality, vulnerable areas, sensitive areas, origins of effluents (industrial, agricultural, urban), actions in progress, specific problems, complementary action programmes, and bibliography. A strong cartographic basis will be developed to analyze the data for each basin, and present the available information in a synthetic fashion.