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The farming belt of Santa Fe city is located North of the urban area. There is no water supply or sewer system in the area. Water is withdrawn from private wells drilled in households, coexisting with septic tanks and orchards. The activities developed constitute serious contamination threats; contamination hazards could increase due to a rise in the levels of groundwater and/or fluvial or rain floods. The environmental diagnosis presented was made gathering information from previous research studies, interviews to professionals, surveys among producers, as well as by field and laboratory analysis. Agricultural practices, cultivated species, agrochemicals use and irrigation practices, as well as socio-cultural aspects, residents' lifestyle and characteristics related to drainage, use of resources and commitment to the environment by the population were reported. On the basis of the results obtained, some guidelines for the management and protection of the groundwater resources are outlined, in order to contribute to an environmentally sustainable development of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some activities carried out in the Northern part of the province of Mendoza may affect groundwater quality: industrial effluent disposal and reuse for irrigation, fertilizer application, on-site sanitation systems, sewer leaks, etc. In this area, cut across by the Mendoza and Tunuyán rivers, two large hydro-geological units developed from Quaternary sedimentation: unconfined aquifers (area of alluvial cones) and upper water-table and underlying semiconfined and confined aquifers (where the study area is located). The objective of this paper is to identify the source of nitrate contamination in aquifers. Several physical-chemical and biological parameters were analyzed to assess groundwater quality, and isotope techniques were used to trace the origin of groundwater and the source of nitrates. Results show that nitrate contamination in semi-confined and confined aquifers does not originate in the overlying unconfined aquifer, which is affected by reuse of industrial effluents, but is caused by the horizontal groundwater flow from the greater Mendoza area contaminated by sewer leakage and on-site sanitation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]