Member publications

There is a process ongoing in the EU to introduce a group ban on all PFAS – this will cover at least 4700 different variants. This report from Svenskt Vatten concludes with proposals for some measures that they believe will be crucial to addressing the PFAS problem in future. Upstream work is the key, that is to say ensuring that PFAS does not end up in our sewage systems, in soil and water. The only way to achieve this is to ban PFAS.

Water suppliers in the catchment areas of the major European rivers are convinced that a future-proof, climate-friendly, safe and affordable public drinking water supply for everyone requires generation-spanning preservation of the usability of the drinking water resources. Their common intention and aim is sustainable and precaution-driven protection of our drinking water resources. In their river basins, in addition to the indirect use of the surface water bodies (as riverbank filtrate or enriched groundwater), the abstraction of natural groundwater formed through precipitation is also of major water management importance. The present Groundwater Memorandum formulates five key requirements for the protection of naturally formed groundwater resources and thus complements the European River Memorandum (ERM) aiming at the protection of the surface water bodies.

A study of how Swedish companies are affected financially in the event of an interruption in the water supply

Authors: Karin Sjöstrand and Josefine Klingberg, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Noor Sedehi Zadeh, VTI Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute

Summary: How are companies in different industries affected by water supply disruptions? The project has collected information from more than 1,400 Swedish companies. Based on the survey results, resilience factors have been calculated for 35 different industries. The factors provide a measure of the proportion of companies' operations that can be maintained in the event of an interruption. They can be used, for example, to calculate interruption risks and estimate the benefits of risk reduction measures. They also provide a basis for in-depth dialogue between drinking water producers and companies.

Keywords: Water supply outage, critical infrastructure disruption, economic loss, business interruption, resiliency factor, risk reduction

This Profile of the German Water Sector 2020 gives an updated overview of water supply and wastewater disposal in Germany. It enables the interested public and policy makers to learn all about the services the sector provides, the diversity of tasks it undertakes, and the current challenges it is facing. The 2020 Water Sector Profile demonstrates that the modernisation strategy, pursued by politicians and the water sector alike, remains effective even under increasingly difficult conditions.

The climate action plan for the water sector emphasises the message that Danish water technology can help find solutions to global climate challenges. The ambition of the political parties behind the agreement is for the water companies in Denmark to be energy and climate-neutral. The key figures for the water sector show that the water companies are already well on the way to achieving this.

This report sets out to illustrate the growing relevance of the urban water cycle due to the current situation, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, since it becomes an essential element in guaranteeing the health and hygiene of citizens, promoting sustainable growth that helps improve the environment, as well as contribute to economic recovery by creating quality employment and strengthening the welfare state.

The overall goal of this study is to understand the renewal of investment needs concerning the urban water cycle in Spain. To achieve this objective, three specific goals were identified:

1. Performing an inventory of special infrastructures and networks that make up the integrated urban water cycle, in its current actual configuration.

2. Calculating the as-new replacement value of the cost resulting from setting up all that capital.

3. Estimating the annual cost of renewal investment to sustainably maintain the capital, stemming from different scenarios based on their renewal period.

The scope of this project covers the analysis of urban water cycle investment needs, distinguishing between water supply and sanitation services. In turn, each part of the integrated water cycle is broken down into networks and special infrastructures.

The scope of application of this study encompasses those infrastructures that support local and regional water supply and sanitation services; thus, regulation infrastructures that are a matter of water basins’ competence are not covered.

This seventh edition of the BIPE-BDO/FP2E overview of public water and wastewater services in France comes amid the reaffirmation of a political will in France to reinvest in the sector. This, together with a drive to improve performances through contractual arrangements between actors, was clearly in evidence at the sector's national conference, the Assises de l'Eau. The ambition to achieve greater efficiency of services is reflected in the extensive use of strategic planning and the trend towards greater data transparency. Achieving the good status of water bodies remains a priority objective – an objective reinforced with the revision of the European Water Framework Directive. Indeed, adapting to the effects of climate change is now an imperative that cannot be ignored.

Les services publics d’eau et d’assainissement en France 7ème édition Données économiques, sociales & environnementales