The limitations of nitrate-sensitive zoning for groundwater protection from pesticides in Denmark

Pesticides and degradation products are a major challenge for groundwater management in Europe, and in Denmark where drinking water relies entirely on groundwater. To protect drinking water resources, local Danish authorities must take groundwater-protective measures in areas designated as sensitive to pollution; however, official zonation for pesticides is lacking. Nitrate-sensitive groundwater abstraction areas have been used instead. The goal of our study was to test the appropriateness of this groundwater protection strategy. We used Køge municipality (Denmark) as a focus area and tested how our findings upscale to the national level. The data for Køge municipality included 1070 individual groundwater samples, analysed for at least one of 366 pesticide compounds during the period 2012–2022, which were aggregated at the well-screen level by the median. Four pesticide compounds (2,6-dichlorobenzamide (BAM), desphenylchloridazon (DPC), N,N-dimethylsulphamide (DMS), 1,2,4-triazole) and three pesticide groups (phenoxyalcanoic acids, triazines and dimethachlor and its metabolites) were found with the highest detection frequency in the study area. We found that groundwater pollution with pesticide compounds was not limited to nitrate-sensitive areas in Køge municipality or in Denmark as a whole. Therefore, nitrate-sensitive areas can only be used partially for identifying pesticide-sensitive groundwater abstraction areas. The management implication is that placing protective measures only within nitrate-sensitive areas would be insufficient to fully address the risk of future groundwater pesticide pollution. We identified knowledge gaps and discussed a potential way forward with a more integrated management of groundwater protection in Denmark.