The groundwater quantitative status assesment: an example in the northwestern basin of Campania (Southern Italy)

The Water Framework Directive protects groundwater and sets ambitious objectives for its quality and quantity. In particular, the Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of The Council of 23 October 2000 establishes an exact definition of groundwater chemical status on the basis of the chemical parameters values. Otherwise, the directive only defines the Good Groundwater Quantity Status when the available groundwater resource is not exceeded by the long-term annual average rate of abstraction. Even the Italian Laws concerning water monitoring and protection, and including technical regulation for groundwater monitoring of the Italian territory, the “D. Lgs. 152/1999 and the D. Lgs. 258/2000”, do not provide guidelines for the groundwater quantitative status assessment. In order to construct the groundwater quantitative status map a new method has been performed and applied to the territory of the district authority “Autorità di Bacino Nord-Occidentale della Campania”