Water Distribution Areas — ERA — Normandy

The area of water distribution is an area for basins, river basins and aquifer systems characterised by a deficiency, other than exceptional resource requirements, in relation to needs.In these areas, the thresholds for authorisation and reporting of samples from surface water and groundwater are lowered. These provisions are intended to enable better control of the demand for water, in order to ensure the best preservation of aquatic ecosystems and the reconciliation of economic uses of water. In these areas, water withdrawals of more than 8 m³/s are subject to authorisation and all others are subject to reporting. Water distribution areas are designated by order of the Ministry of the Environment as a list of resources. It is then up to each prefect of the department, by prefectural decree, to determine which municipality is or is not part of each water distribution area, according to criteria for its free determination (e.g. percentage of communal area included in the basin, flow of groundwater, belonging to a geographical unit, etc.), and for groundwater, from what depth on the ground these restrictions apply (top of the table). (definition from: Sander, Administrative Reference 1997)