In recent years the availability of freshwater has been highlighted as among the most critical natural resource issues facing the world. Surface water is often the main water source and caused by the bad hygienic quality, water related diseases are the most common cause of illness. Sufficient treatment often can not be afforded by the locals. Infiltration systems as bank filtration or artificial recharge can be used as a low cost treatment method for heavily polluted surface waters. MAR (Management of aquifer recharge) has also been proven as very successful treatment step for drinking water production. Guidelines and models were developed especially within the NASRI group in Berlin to optimize those systems and to make them transferable to new sites. Post-drinking water treatment can than be added in an appropriate size depending on the achieved water quality. The combination of both can help to lower treatment costs and to reduce the amount of highly contaminated sludge.

This paper provides the results obtained in a large interdisciplinary R&D project. The main investigations are on degradation of pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, bacteria, viruses and pathogens, algae toxins and organic trace substances. Further, management models were developed to simulate the best design of new recharge facilities and to improve existing sites. All results show the interdependencies of the significant processes especially in geochemistry and hydraulics of well field performances.