ABSTRACT
Between 1997 and 2001 a Project called “Study of the Groundwater Resources of Alentejo Region” (ERHSA, in Portuguese) was carried out in the region of Alentejo, southern part of Portugal (Figure 1). From the total area of Alentejo (26,931 km2), 21,245 km2 correspond to hard rocks. During the project more than 7,000 data points were inventoried in all hard rock aquifers of Alentejo. Most of them were wells or hand dug wells that are used basically
for agriculture or domestic purposes. The most important abstractions in Portugal are related with agriculture. The actual number of public supply surface water points in Portugal is 459 (5% of the origins) and 8,900 groundwater points (95%). The total abstracted surface water volume is 627 hm3 and the groundwater volume is 404 hm3 (INAG 2006) for a total urban consumption of 529 hm3. The difference is related with losses on the supply systems or other uses. The consumption per capita is 169 L/inhab/day. Figure 2 (adapted from Ribeiro 2004) shows the distribution of ground-and surface water consumption in Alentejo, by municipalities.
