ABSTRACT
Intensive agriculture has significantly decreased the groundwater quality of the upper aquifer in the rural Bourtanger Moor area (NW-Germany). Water supply depends on ground water abstracted from a local lower aquifer. The deep aquifer is recharged by leakage through an aquitard from the shallow aquifer. The water quality of the wells will therefore over time equal the poor quality of the upper aquifer. Mass balancing approaches, column experiments and reactive transport modeling were used to predict the time left until contaminant breakthrough to the wells.
