What about the customer with his needs and interests, or the communes with their responsibility for supply and treatment, or the water resources themselves being an essential and extremely sensitive raw material?

The situation in Austria

Water supply structures in Austria have developed historically and largely correspond to the regional and local topography. Since water supply and wastewater treatment are tasks of existential provision and in order to secure the safety of supply, they were defined as a “sovereign” tasks.

That way it was possible in Austria to develop a functioning drinking water supply of a high international standard.

Basic problems of water supply are the local and temporal balance between available supplies and demand. The dimension of the supply structure – individual supply, group supply, central/regional/supraregional compound systems – immediately depends on the settlement structure and the available water supplies.

The main criteria are operating efficiency and quality assurance – many centralised supply structures thus provide much better protection against contamination and malfunction. In addition, hygienic requirements by the authorities and protection strategies are important factors for the decentralisation of water supply.

To optimise water supply it is therefore necessary to consider in the discussion the entire chain of added value from water extraction, treatment, distribution and service. The biggest portion (about 80 percent) of costs are incurred for the necessary distribution system, i.e. fixed costs which are independent of water consumption.

To continue please see "Water Discussion – Efficiency of Water Supply" – Part II

(Source: aqua press Int 3/2001)
Dipl.-Ing. Helmut Jung