Incorporating groundwater issues into regional planning in the Province of Quebec

In recent decades, governments have developed better knowledge of groundwater and established measures to protect and preserve it. In the hope of protecting this resource and ensuring its sustainability, the Government of Quebec has launched a programme to characterise groundwater in the southern portion of the province. Prior to launching this programme, pilot projects were carried out in two watersheds to produce groundwater atlases. However, the producers of the atlases are under the impression that their documents remain unused by municipal and county planners. The main objective of this study is to propose strategies to facilitate the incorporation of groundwater data into land planning processes. This paper presents the results of a series of semi-directed interviews with land planning stakeholders in the Province of Quebec. The study proposes four actions to improve the use of groundwater information in land planning: an awareness-raising campaign for all citizens, basic training on groundwater for land planning stakeholders, a legal framework defining who should protect groundwater and how, and a GIS tool that would help planners interpret the data.