How does the St-Benoît spring function?


 Were is the Saint-Benoît spring water coming from ?

The spring’s catchment area is relatively well delimited, it extends on a few square kilometres from the Siron Mountain.
As this area is not inhabited, the water is naturally protected from all kinds of pollution (agro-pastoral, industrial, chemical).


The rainwater which falls on the catchment area penetrates in depth and circulates
in the calcareous ground rocks.

    The water arises on the surface at the St-Benoît spring,
    behind the Geopark’s administrative buildings and museum.

      A little rock fall area, five meters upstream the spring, could be likely to let infiltrate pollutants. This is why a protection perimeter has been installed around this area, in order to preserve the water's quality.



Protection perimeter all around the spring's captation.


The St-Benoît spring's working ...

 
The infiltrated rainwater circulates more than a year and half in the aquifer before arise to the spring.

It is slow enough to allow the water to load itself in dissolved biogenic salts.


The spring’s flow is relatively constant and very little influenced by the variations of precipitation
.
The flow is on average
10 litres per second, or 600 litres per minute.

The water’s mineralization is constant, which ensures the water’s drinkability.

We estimate there is 0,54 millions m3 water in the St-Benoît aquifer!

When it rains, the infiltrating rainwater does not mix up with the ground water in storage, but pushes it to the spring.
The new rainwater takes the place of the stored water. This phenomenon is called a « Piston flow ». The flow of the source changes little, it is especially its mineralisation which increases.

Little waterfall dowstream the spring.