HCOV_0500, Bartoon Aquitard System Prevention Area

Flanders is made up of an alternation of aquifers (sand, gravel, chalk, solid rock, ...) and regionally occurring non-aquifers (e.g. clay). The sequence of these aquifers and aquitards has its own coding in Flanders: the Hydrogeological Coding of the Subsurface of Flanders (HCOV-coding). The HCOV coding is made up of hydrogeological main, sub and base units. The main unit groups a sequence of geological layers that have broadly the same hydrogeological properties and thus form a single whole. This hydrogeological main unit includes the closing layer formed by successive clay layers belonging to the Formation of Maldegem. This includes some sand layers that are hydrogeologically very different from the clay layers, but they are too limited in dimension to play a major hydrogeological role.