History
Carved into a limestone resistant, creeks consist of many landscapes of the Mediterranean coasts. We can bring them together, in form, rias or estuaries or fjords Breton.
Seawater is often fresher because the cliffs fall right under the sea without real coastal plateau and because many sources of fresh water flowing into the sea, beneath its surface, by an underground network that collects runoff from the mountains (Marseilleveyre) and trays (Carpiagne).
Calcareous all coasts have experienced this phenomenon when the sea went down to 135 m [1] before recovering drowning the springs and streams. In the Mediterranean, the Messinian between -7 and -5 million years, sea, virtually disappearing, its level is "descended" from 1000 to 1500 m.
Thus, a stream of high flow rate (5 to 7 m³ / sec) results in the creek of Port-Miou, almost at sea level, it appears to come from the Sainte-Baume and would be fed by an aquifer of 1000 km ² in Provence. Such a flow would provide drinking water to over one million people. Since ancient times, this source is known (Pytheas mentions it). However, after the dives, it is a brackish water as it undergoes upwelling of seawater by faults and, furthermore, it is contaminated by release of red mud (from the processing of bauxite) rejected 300 m offshore in the Bay Cassis.
