Spatial planning and the protecting of subterranean waters

Abstract

Water is a natural resource that requires a supply and quality guarantee in keeping with spatial
planning criteria and this is met by the WFD which brings together all the new strategies aimed at
sector or territorial water managing policies.
Its vulnerability to contamination, the menace that pressures and excess demands made upon the
carbonated underground water resources of the Sierra de Cañete (Malaga), Spain are examined in
the paper. These supply eight townships which fall within those appropriate town and country
planning criteria at present in convential use within the study zone.
The fi ndings offered here warrant the progress made in the wake of WFD´s coming into effect even
though they do indicate that there is still much to be done as to coordinating the various
administrations involved, those different levels of decision taking proper to the question
—Community, National, Regional and Local— and the many social agencies along with local
community thinking with an interest in the question at the consumer level. This, it is here urged
needs doing to reconcile social and economic priorities with the call for protecting both the quantity
and the quality of a prime necessity of the population at large.