Water quality in Aragon. Aragon

Water is good or bad, useful or useless depending on who, in what place and at what time. What for some may be "low quality" water turns out to be "a gift from heaven" in areas that suffer constant droughts. The concept of water quality or quality water is, therefore, very ambiguous.

In any case, there is no chemically pure water in nature. Since its origin in precipitation, all water has dissolved different chemical substances that progressively increase in contact with the soil and subsoil. This mineralization or natural contamination of water is greater in underground water than in surface water, since in the subsoil the water circulates for longer and in more intimate contact with the ground.

On the contrary, surface waters are more susceptible to contamination by human activity. Virtually all our activities need water to a greater or lesser extent, from our personal hygiene to the operation of large industries. This human use causes changes in the water, some of such magnitude that they make it unusable at a certain place and time. The water is then contaminated and must be purified.

There are many forms of pollution in a world like today's. The wastewater from large cities discharged untreated into rivers, the often toxic discharges from large industries and the indiscriminate use of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture pollute river beds.

How Quality is Measured

Official organizations try to control and avoid water pollution as much as possible. For this important task, the quality of Aragonese rivers is controlled at points distributed throughout Aragon. A series of physical and chemical parameters are periodically measured that serve to establish a General Quality Index (GCI) of the water.

The General Quality index of the waters of the Aragonese rivers is quite acceptable if the sections of the Gállego downstream of Zuera, in the Ebro between Zaragoza and Escatrón and the Huerva at its mouth are excepted.

But if the quality of the water in Aragonese rivers were measured based on the use that could be given to it, the situation would no longer be so good. Thus, almost all of these waters require prior treatment to be used as a supply to populations (purification) and require softening (demineralization) for use in industry. Finally, the waters of many Aragonese rivers have high salt contents, which also increase year after year, which is why they sometimes cause the salinization of the lands they irrigate instead of fertilizing them.

Official organizations are aware of these problems and in recent years have increased the control of river water quality and the surveillance of urban and industrial waste. However, some industries try to escape this control by dumping their most toxic waste into aquifers, where it is very difficult to exercise surveillance that has only just begun.



Other pages on the WATER in Aragon:

• Philosophy water.
• World Water Day.
• Water is life.
• Physical description of Aragon.
• The harsh weather conditions.
• Veins of Aragon.
• The father Ebro.
• Surface water and groundwater.
• The water resources of the rivers Aragon.
• Water usage.
• The Aragonese irrigation.
• Water for all.
• Water quality.
• Life along the rivers.
• Water Management.
• Water Charter.
• Capacity Reservoirs >= 2 Hm³.
• Summary table of water resources in Aragon.
• Manifesto for Water in Aragon.
• Bibliography.
• Aragonese Protected Areas.
• Location of Aragon.



Also Aragon enjoys a diverse and varied Nature where passing by plants, animals, Geology, or landscapes we can arrive at a fantastic bestiary that lives in its monuments.

The information will not be complete without a stroll by its three provinces, with shutdown in some of its spectacular landscapes like Ordesa, the Moncayo, Monegros or by opposition the Ebro.

Also you can dedicarte to the intangible ones: from the legend compilation that also does to universal Aragon.