Issues of quality, protection and study of groundwater resources

The importance of groundwater in drinking water supply is increasing every year. In the USSR, at present, more than half of the urban population and at least 80% of the rural population use groundwater. At the same time, despite the enormous, often insufficiently fully satisfied demand for water, groundwater in the USSR is used completely insufficiently (less than 2% of the recorded reserves). This is due to: 1) poor knowledge of groundwater resources; 2) uneven distribution of water reserves; 3) severe pollution of a number of water sources, including groundwater, by industrial effluents (in particular, in the Donbass, wastewater discharge at the Lesnaya Dacha site disabled two water intakes that supplied two cities with drinking water). In the United States, as the late President J. Kennedy stated several years ago, water should be the number one problem by 1970. In our country, the rapid development of industry, especially the chemical industry, as well as an increase in the area of ​​irrigated land is being forced to take measures to protect water resources from depletion and pollution. This was the reason for the convocation of a special All-Union Scientific and Technical Conference on the use of underground waters and their artificial replenishment.