Securing and monitoring water resources at the Goodyear plant

Goodyear is a tyre manufacturer with research centres and manufacturing plants throughout Europe and the rest of the world. In France, the company has a tyre test circuit. Here, they carry out tests under real conditions, i.e. in rain or high temperatures, to guarantee the performance of their products.

The circuit is located in the Hérault region, near Montpellier, in the commune of Mireval. And to test their tyres in the wet, they use water from their own borehole. This water is collected and reused to water the tracks.

Goodyear asked imaGeau to carry out a study aimed at securing the water resources at their Mireval test centre.

Our team visited the Mireval site to study the water supply and assess the various possible solutions. The options considered included

• Drilling a new borehole,
• Using water from the drinking water network,
• Installing rainwater storage
• Closing the circuit

We analysed each of these proposals, taking into account a number of criteria, including financial cost, regulatory deadlines and the benefits for Goodyear.

They opted for the creation of a new borehole in the short term, while planning, in the medium term, to connect to the drinking water network in order to have a back-up resource.

We provided support to Goodyear on the regulatory aspects of the project, in particular drawing up and monitoring the application for authorisation from the French government under the Environment Code (water law).

Because of their proximity to the sea, the boreholes on the Mireval circuit are subject to the risk of salt water intrusion. As our SMD solution is not applicable here due to the karstic nature of the aquifer tapped, we have set up instrumentation that we monitor continuously with EMI.

This means that Goodyear can control its drilling remotely, based on real-time data from the application. It can choose the appropriate borehole to take non-salty water, while putting the one with high salinity at rest.