Water is an important food and an important natural resource. In order to protect these are the Environmental Code and the EU directive given to water protection and related water protection regulations will be established for all water sources until 2010. Those who will prepare a water protection and related water protection regulations is the municipality or person responsible for water supply. The person then decides and declares the area as water protection and related water protection regulations are municipal or provincial government. The idea of creating a water protection is to protect the water supply and the body of water against pollution caused by point sources, diffuse sources and accidents combined.

During installation and operation of a geothermal heat pump system leakage of an antifreezing agent can appear in a borehole and leak out in surrounding groundwater. To guarantee high quality drinking water for generations to come Sweden has dedicated some areas as Water protection areas. The local authority gives permits for the installation of heat pump systems within Water protection areas. Before giving a permit the local authority makes an evaluation of the risks involved in installation and operation of the system within the area. By keeping a certain distance between the protected object in the area and the heat pump system the risk of polluting the protected object with an anti-freezing agent can be reduced.This thesis makes a comparison between three different methods of calculating an appropriate distance between the protected object and the heat pump system.

The objective of this report was to analyse and compare vulnerability and preparation in Swedish municipal drinking water production, in case the commonly used water sources were inoperative. Methods used were a questionnaire and a less extensive study of regulations for Water protection areas. The questionnaire was answered by 41 Swedish municipalities. A handful of them were companies co-owned by a few municipalities. Only one out of four municipalities had source protection areas to all their water sources and for many sources the protection was not satisfactory.

The river Göta Älv reaches between Vänern and Gothenburg and is the main raw water source for Gothenburg that supplies about 700 000 people with water. To protect and maintain a high water quality, continuously samples and water analyses are made throughout the river. In 1998 a protection area was founded between surte and Lärjeholm where the raw water intake is. This was made to increase the awareness of the importance to protect the water. However, there is a lot of contribution of untreated stormwater to Göta Älv within the protection area.Göteborg Water and Sewage Works commissioned this thesis where two areas, Tagene industrial area and Kärra residential area, with untreated stormwater outlets within the protection area are studied.

To guarantee protection of our drinking water, water catchment protections are established. These are divided into three different zones and in the first zone it is most likely that an activity, such as agriculture, will contaminate the water resource. Hence the activities are strongly regulated or banned. The EU communion is working towards a sustained water quality through several directives; Nitrate Directive, Waterframwork directives and Sustainable use of pesticide directive. The main purpose is to regulate the diffuse pollution from agriculture.This thesis is about how Denmark, Germany and France are working towards a sustainable agriculture within Water protection areas.

This study describes what impact activity within Wifstas, Matfors,Grönstas and Nolbys Water protection areas have on the quality of the drinkingwater. It considers the use of the area, environmentally dangerous activitiesin the past and present, the geology?s part, what harm hydroelectric power damsmay cause if they break and how climate change might affect the area in thefuture. It also takes into consideration activities outside the waterprotection areas which might have a suspected impact on the water quality. Theresults of the study are that pollution from infrastructure such as roads, orwastewater from treatment plants may cause occasional contamination of thedrinking water, foremost due to flooding.

AbstractDrinking water is an important resource on Earth both for humans and animals. Although most of the surface is covered by water only a small quantity is available as drinking water. Our manner of living creates a lot of pollution which has an environmental impact. Groundwater has a protracted turnover time in the soil and it can take many years before the effects of human impact are detected. The Swedish environmental object is ?Good groundwater quality? which aims to provide a safe and sustainable supply of drinking water today and in the future.

Coastal areas are popular for housing, both for permanent living and holiday houses. At the same time, thin sediments and small storage capacity in the bedrock makes the ground water resources limited. The limited ground water resources combined with too large withdrawals of ground water makes salt water intrusion a problem in many coastal areas. This study examine the risk of salt water intrusion in drinking water supplying wells on the island Södra Finnö in S:t Anna archipelago, Östergötland, Sweden. A calculation of the relation between ground water recharge and withdrawal is obtained to analyze the ground water balance in the area.

When establishing a groundWater protection area it is of great interest to be able to estimate the transit time of the groundwater from different places of the aquifer to the withdrawal well. These estimates can be uncertain due to heterogeneities in the aquifer. As a part of the work to develop methods for a more certain delineation of protection areas, a tracer test was performed in an esker located 25 kilometres NW of the town Uppsala.The purpose of this master thesis was to perform, describe and evaluate the tracer test. Travel times from the tracer test should then enable comparison against stochastic simulated travel times of the groundwater in the area.Three dyes (rhodamine WT, uranine and naphtionate) and a salt (NaBr) were used in the tracer test. The tracers were injected in four different wells located 25 meters from a pumping well.

AbstractFalu Copper Mine and Sustainable DevelopmentKarl-Markus AnsnaesFalu copper mine was Sweden?s oldest mine industry which lasted for almost a thousand years. Throughout the history its area has been vastly contaminated by sulfur oxide. The contaminations has created the mining area to an environmental risk zone which has the ability to spread out into the Falu River. The river has its connections to the Dal River which is discharging towards its mouth in the Baltic Sea.

In many European countries there is an increasing concern about the occasionally high concentrations of nitrate and pesticides in drinking water. The advent of the EU Water Framework Directive particularly highlights this. The directive states that all large drinking water sources should be identified and protected from pollution before 2009 and that by 2015 all water bodies should reach a 'good status'. In Sweden about 60 percent of the drinking water sources have protection areas. This means that about 700 new Water protection areas need to be designated before 2009. This will affect many farmers, restricting their farming practices. The purpose of this study was to investigate which methods are used in other countries concerning nitrate and pesticide pollution from agriculture. From this, the expectation was to generate ideas on what could be undertaken in Sweden when designating new protection areas.

Ensåsengruvan is a mine situated within Ljusdals municipality in central Sweden. Themine was in use from 1984 to 1991 and has since been undergoing a remediation program. Mine tailings from sulfide rich ore is a potential environmental hazard due to its tendency to cause acid waters and heavy metal leakage. Lake Ensjön is situated one kilometer from the mine area. Due to the hydrological conditions it was not expected to receive inflowing water from the mining area.

The city of Uppsala and its surroundings are a very expansive area. A prerequisite for a sustainable development of the area is well-functioning supply of drinking water. In Uppsala municipality, the Uppsala esker and Vattholma esker are the groundwater storages for drinking water. Besides the eskers, other sources of qualitative groundwater in the Uppsala municipality are relatively poor and more than half of the area consists of ground conditions with a risk of saline groundwater. The neighbourhood of Vreta-Ytternäs is situated 10 km south of Uppsala, in the area with risk of saline groundwater but outside the municipal water supply.

The discharge from Lake Mälaren is regulated to keep the lake water level within limits set by a water decree. Despite this, in the year 2000 the lake water level rose above the upper limit. Studies conducted at the climate modeling unit Rossby Centre at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) indicate that the inflow to the lake may increase in the future. A flood in the area will, among other things, strike infrastructure and residential districts.The aim of this study was to investigate the water levels of Lake Mälaren in future climates. In addition to this possible future expansion of the lake discharge though the sluice gates in order to keep water levels below limits set by the water decree and to prevent flooding of the shoreline were discussed.

In Sweden, the eutrophication of lakes, water courses and the coastal areas is considered the major threat to aquatic ecosystems and therefore actions taken to reduce the nutrient load to aquatic system including the Baltic Sea has high priority. There are many different sources of phosphorous and nitrogen and domestic wastewater is one contributing factor to the high load. Especially waste water from households that is not connected to municipal sewage treatment or a local small scale plant with appropriate nutrient removal efficiency is considered a problem. These types of households are quite common in rural areas in Sweden and in areas where summer houses has been converted to permanent living. Swedish legislation now permit the municipalities to decide in which areas within the municipality higher demands of the local small scale treatment facility should be met by the households (i.e.