Water resources management within the water-protection zone of the “Donauried”: solving conflicts between water supply, ecology and agriculture

One of the tasks of sustainable water-quality and resources management must be to resolve conflicts between its demands and those of agriculture and ecology. In most industrial countries, there are conflicts between the different requirements of water supply, i.e. water quality, and those of agriculture and the conservation of wetlands, i.e. water quantity. Solving these conflicts means a reorganisation of land use. A non-governmental committee has initiated a voluntary compromise program for the water-protection zone of the Donauried. On the basis of criteria assessing the significance of areas of land, a plan for the reorganisation of land use has been developed. Moreover, an action plan has been prepared; it includes steps for reducing nitrate, a program for reducing land-use intensity, a concept for re-wetting bog areas and an investigation into measures for optimising local water resources using a numerical groundwater model. This was accompanied by an economic evaluation of the measures.