Land control and protection of a drinking water catchment area: lessons learned from an original experience

Abstract

Land property ownership purchase becomes a solution worth studying to control the quality of the water of a drinking water collection area when the productive use of certain areas needs to be restricted. However such purchase projects may come up against a land market that is blocked by owners in a monopolistic position. Based on a real-life operation, this article sets out the nature of land problems in question and the characteristics of the technical system that enabled these problems to be resolved. In order to facilitate the extension of this mode of intervention to other drinking water collection areas, we propose that such land property ownership purchases be state-approved. This will in turn facilitate any future use of efficient land intervention tools.