ABSTRACT
Saline groundwater pollution originating from tailing dumps at the Mines de Potasse d’Alsace (MDPA) affects a large part of the Haut-Rhin Département. Even if the upper layer of the underlying aquifer shows a general tendency to improve following remediation works implemented by the MDPA with the financial partnership of Agence de l’eau Rhin-Meuse (AERM), investigation still has to be carried out on the salinity and salinity trends of the deeper aquifer layers. It is, therefore, important to be able to use a numerical model to simulate the evolution of salinity in both the deep and the shallow layers. The objectives of the model are to predict the long-term evolution of aquifer salinity and to host test pumping scenarios, which will help to design an optimum programme of aquifer quality restoration. This paper describes the different steps in the construction and calibration of the model and the main results which were obtained.
