Water supply and sanitation in Germany

Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... : Water and Sanitation
Data
Water coverage (broad definition)	100%
Sanitation coverage (broad definition)	100%
Continuity of supply (%)	100%
Average urban water use (l/c/d)	122 (2007)
Average urban domestic water and sewer bill	€32/month
Share of household metering	100%
Non-revenue water Non-revenue water Non revenue water is water that has been produced and is “lost” before it reaches the customer. Losses can be real losses or apparent losses . High levels of NRW are detrimental to the financial viability of water utilities, as well to the quality of water itself...	7% (2001)
Share of collected wastewater treated	100%
Annual investment in WSS	€100/capita
Share of self-financing by utilities	100%
Share of tax-financing	0%
Share of external financing	0%
Institutions
Decentralization to municipalities	Full
National water and sanitation company	None
Water and sanitation regulator	None
Responsibility for policy setting	Not clearly defined
Sector law	None
Number of service providers	about 6,000

Public water supply

Water supply

Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavours or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes...

and sanitation

Sanitation

Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...

in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

is universal and of good quality. Some salient features of the sector compared to other developed countries are its very low per capita water use, the high share of advanced wastewater treatment and very low distribution losses. Responsibility for water supply and sanitation provision lies with municipalities, which are regulated by the states. Professional associations and utility associations play an important role in the sector. As in other EU countries, most of the standards applicable to the sector are set in Brussels (see EU water policy). Recent developments include a trend to create commercial public utilities under private law and an effort to modernize the sector, including through more systematic benchmarking

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and/or best practices from other industries. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost...

Access to water and sanitation

		Urban (88% of the population)	Rural (12% of the population)	Total
Water	Broad definition	100%	100%	100%
	House connections	100%	97%	100%
Sanitation	Broad definition	100%	100%	100%
	Sewerage	93%	93%	93%

Source: Joint Monitoring Program WHO

Who

Who may refer to:* Who , an English-language pronoun* who , a Unix command* Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism- Art and entertainment :* Who? , a 1958 novel by Algis Budrys...

/UNICEF(JMP/2006). Data for water and sanitation based on Health for All database, WHO Regional Office for Europe (1990).

Access to safe water and adequate sanitation in Germany is universal. More than 99 percent of users are connected to a public water supply system. The remainder is served by private wells. 93 percent of users are connected to sewers. The remainder is connected to various types of on-site sanitation systems.

Water use

About 80 percent of public water use is accounted for by residential and small commercial users. The remainder is accounted for by industries supplied from public water systems (14 percent) and other users (6 percent).

Residential and small commercial water use is the second lowest among 14 European countries and only a fraction of what it is in North America. Despite forecasts about increasing per capita water use, use actually declined from 145 liter/capita/day in 1990 to only 122 liter/capita/day in 2007.

Low water consumption has had some negative operational, health and even environmental impacts. On the operational side, sewers have to be flushed occasionally with injected drinking water in order to prevent stagnation of raw sewage. On the health side, there are concerns about potable water contamination due to low flows. On the environmental side, in some cities such as Berlin water tables are rising and cause damage to the foundations of buildings because of decreased pumping of groundwater by utilities.

Water resources and public water supply

Water is not scarce in Germany, except for occasional localized droughts. Public water utilities abstract only 3 percent of total renewable water resources in Germany, or 5.4 billion cubic meters out of 182 billion cubic meters annually.

The sources of public water supply are as follows:

65% from groundwater
9% from springs
5% from bank filtration
Bank filtration
Bank filtration is a type of filtration that works by passing water to be purified for use as drinking water through the banks of a river or lake. It is then drawn off by extraction wells some distance away from the water body...

, i.e. from wells close to rivers and lakes, drawing essentially surface water
21% directly from surface water

Service quality

Water supply in Germany is continuous, at good pressure, and drinking water quality

Water quality

Water quality is the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of water. It is a measure of the condition of water relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species and or to any human need or purpose. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which...

is excellent, as evidenced by the universal compliance with the EU drinking water directive.Wastewater treatment

Wastewater Treatment

Wastewater treatment may refer to:* Sewage treatment* Industrial wastewater treatment...

is universal. 94 percent of municipal wastewater is treated according to the highest EU standards including nutrient elimination, a much higher percentage than in France (36 percent) or in England and Wales (39 percent).

Consumer perceptions

According to a 2007 national survey for the business association BDEW (BDEW customer barometer) 92% of customers were satisfied or very satisfied with the quality of their drinking water. 82% were satisfied or very satisfied with the service provided by their drinking water provider. 79% were satisfied or very satisfied with the service provided by their wastewater utility. The survey also showed that customers significantly overestimate the price of water and wastewater services compared to the actual price.

Human resources

It is estimated that the total number of those directly employed in German water and sanitation utilities is far more than 100,000.

Infrastructure

The length of the drinking water network in Germany is estimated to be more than 500,000 km. The length of the sewer network in 2004 was estimated by the Federal Statistical Office to be 515,000 km, divided as follows:

238,000 km of combined sewers
171,000 km of sanitary sewers
106,000 km of stormwater sewers

There were 9,994 wastewater treatment plants in Germany in 2004.

Service provision

Public water supply

Water supply

Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavours or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes...

and sanitation

Sanitation

in Germany

Germany

are responsibilities of municipalities

Municipalities of Germany

Municipalities are the lowest level of territorial division in Germany. This may be the fourth level of territorial division in Germany, apart from those states which include Regierungsbezirke , where municipalities then become the fifth level.-Overview:With more than 3,400,000 inhabitants, the...

, of which there were more than 12,000 in 2008. Smaller municipalities often associate in municipal associations to provide water and/or sanitation services. Municipalities or municipal associations in turn can delegate these responsibilities to municipal companies, private companies or public-private partnerships.

There are about 6,400 public water service providers and about 6,900 sanitation service providers in Germany. With a few exceptions, water and sanitation services are typically provided by different entities in the same locality, with sanitation bills being collected by the water utility on behalf of the entity in charge of sanitation.

Water supply

Among the 1,266 larger water service providers about 15 percent are municipal utilities under public law (Eigenbetriebe); 16 percent are inter-municipal utilities (Zweckverbände); 63 percent are utilities under private or mixed law either under private, public or mixed ownership.; and 6 percent are water and land associations (Wasser- und Bodenverbände). Only 3.5 percent of service providers were entirely privately owned (no figures are available on companies with mixed ownership, an increasingly prevalent form of ownership).

Sanitation

Unlike public water supply, sanitation is considered a sovereign core responsibility (hoheitliche Kernaufgabe) of municipalities in Germany. This implies that, unlike water supply, it is exempt from VAT

Vat

Vat or VAT may refer to:* A type of container such as a barrel, storage tank, or tub, often constructed of welded sheet stainless steel, and used for holding, storing, and processing liquids such as milk, wine, and beer...

and corporate taxes. It also implies that companies under private law cannot directly provide sanitation services. The great majority of municipalities thus provide sanitation directly through a municipal sanitation department (Regiebetrieb). Less than 10 percent of the 6,000 sanitation providers are utilities under public law, and none are utilities under private law. However, municipalities or municipal utilities can sign operating contracts (Betreiberverträge) with private companies. Out of the 900 largest sanitation service providers, about 10 percent have signed such contracts for sewerage services and 12 percent for wastewater treatment services.

Examples of large water and sanitation service providers

The largest privately owned public water company is Gelsenwasser AG, a multi-utility (water, sanitation and natural gas distribution) serving 3.2 million inhabitants in North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...

, under concession agreements with 39 municipalities, and many other localities throughout Germany and internationally. http://www.gelsenwasser.de/

An example of a publicly owned large multi-utility (water, electricity generation and distribution, natural gas distribution) is the Mainova AG in Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

.http://www.mainova.de/

The Berliner Wasserbetriebe, a subsidiary of the holding company Berlinwasser, is an example of a public-private partnership providing water and sanitation services in Germany’s capital Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. The holding company Berlinwasser is owned by the city-state of Berlin

Berlin

(50.1 percent), the private German electricity company RWE

RWE

RWE AG , is a German electric power and natural gas public utility company based in Essen. Through its various subsidiaries, the energy company contributes electricity and gas to more than 20 million electricity customers and 10 million gas customers, principally in Europe...

and the private French water company Veolia Environnement. It serves 3.5 million people with water and 3.9 million people with sanitation services.http://www.bwb.de/

Policy and regulation

Responsibility for policy setting in public water supply and sanitation in Germany is shared between the EU, the federal government and state governments (Länder).(For more details on the role of the Länder and municipalities see States of Germany

States of Germany

Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...

) The EU sets the framework legislation for water quality and water resources management (see EU water policy). The organization of public water supply and sanitation, however, remains a prerogative of EU member states. The German states (Länder) play a key role in the sector by setting, among other things, the legal framework for tariff approvals. Municipalities, legally entrusted with service provision, play an indirect role in influencing policy positions related to water and sanitation through their influential municipal associations (the Deutsche Städtetag representing the largest cities and towns and the Deutscher Städte- und Gemeindebund representing smaller cities and towns).

There are no autonomous regulatory agencies for water and sanitation in Germany at the state or federal level. The recently created federal regulatory agency for network industries (Bundesnetzagentur) covers telecommunications, postal services, electricity, gas and rail. It does not cover water supply and sanitation, since it is a responsibility of the states. Water and sanitation tariffs are approved through different procedures in each state, usually by a department in the state Ministry of Economy after a review of the tariff increase request by an independent auditor. In city-states (Berlin

Berlin

, Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, Bremen) this means that the Minister (called Senator) of Economy both requests the tariff increase in his capacity as chairman of the board of the utility and also approves it, which constitutes a conflict of interest. In the case of some private utilities, tariffs are set by a mutually agreed arbitrator based on the professional opinion of an auditor.

Drinking water quality

Water quality

is monitored by the public health departments of municipalities and counties (Landkreise). Environmental monitoring is largely based on self-monitoring, which has proven to be reliable, and occasional samples by environmental Ministries of the states.

Business associations

Industry associations and professional associations also play an important role in self-regulating the water and sanitation sector (verbandliche Selbstverwaltung). In early 2007 there were six associations in the sector. They include two industry associations, the Association of Electricity and Water Utilities BDEW and the VKU (association of municipal utilities); two professional associations, the DWA (professional association for water and sanitation), BVGW (professional association for gas and water); and two associations specialized on sub-sectors, the ATT (working group of dam operators providing drinking water) and DBVW (association of land and water associations). In particular the two professional associations play an important role assisting in the development of technical norms and, more recently, in performance benchmarking

Benchmarking

Recent developments: debate on liberalization and modernization

A study commissioned in 2000 by the Ministry of Economy suggested to liberalize the German water sector, allowing competition similar to the telecommunications and electricity sectors. The proposal met with harsh criticism, including from the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) and the associations of municipalities, which alleged that liberalization could entail setbacks for the protection of health and the environment.
The liberalization proposal was not further pursued. However, public-private partnerships continued to become more widespread and the trend towards the creation of private law water utilities (commercialization) continued.

In reaction to the liberalization debate the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag

Bundestag

The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

) passed a decision sponsored by the Green party and the Social-democrats (SPD

Social Democratic Party of Germany

The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

) on sustainable water supply and sanitation (nachhaltige Wasserwirtschaft) in 2001. The decision rejected the liberalization of the water sector, but also called for the merging of smaller service providers, higher competitiveness and the general modernization of the sector, including through systematic performance benchmarking

Benchmarking

. In 2005, the six professional associations signed a declaration promoting benchmarking, based on a methodology developed by the International Water Association.

Water losses

Water losses in the distribution network have been estimated at only 7 percent in 2001, down from 11 percent in 1991. According to a study commissioned by the BGW losses are 19 percent in England/Wales, 26 percent in France and 29 percent in Italy
These would not only be the lowest water losses in the four countries, but also in the world. The study states that its methodology allows for an accurate comparison, including water used to flush pipes and for firefighting. This is consistent with the International Water Association's definition of non-revenue water

Non-revenue water

Non revenue water is water that has been produced and is “lost” before it reaches the customer. Losses can be real losses or apparent losses . High levels of NRW are detrimental to the financial viability of water utilities, as well to the quality of water itself...

, which includes authorized non-metered consumption such as for flushing and firefighting.

Benchmarking

has been undertaken for a long period by German utilities, but not in a comprehensive and systematic manner. In 1998 the Federal Ministry of Education and Research initiated a competition of ideas to reduce the costs of water supply together with the economic research institute RWI and 14 water utilities. It developed a set of criteria to assess strengths and weaknesses in the industry. Participating utilities say that they reduced their operating costs by about 5 percent after two to three years. The professional associations DVGW and DWA have jointly established a voluntary benchmarking system, which keeps individual company data confidential. The associations consider the system as being highly successful.

Germany has so far not participated in international benchmarking efforts such as International Benchmarking Network,http://www.ib-net.org/ which is so far mainly focused on developing countries and which makes results for each utility public.

Tariffs and cost recovery

Legal framework

By law (Kommunalabgabengesetze or Betriebsgesetze der Länder) tariffs must cover the full costs of water supply and sanitation, including capital replacement and the remuneration of equity. The various state laws do not foresee a review of the level of the efficiency of investments and operations as part of the tariff approval procedure. Some states also levy a resource charge for groundwater abstractions which is passed on by utilities to the consumers. There is no such a charge for surface water abstraction, however.

Utilities also pay a wastewater discharge fee which depends on the degree of pollution of the discharged treated wastewater. The discharge fee is supposed to provide an incentive to treat water beyond what is legally required (Abwasserabgabengesetz). It accounts for about 3 percent of total sanitation costs.

Tariff levels

In 2004 water tariffs averaged 1.81 euro per cubic meter including VAT

Vat

, and sanitation tariffs averaged 2.14 euro per cubic meter.

According to NUS consulting water tariffs in Germany (without sanitation) were the highest of 16 mainly OECD countries at the equivalent of US$ 2.25 per cubic meter, about on par with tariffs in Denmark.

However, according to a study commissioned by the German industry association BGW in 2006, the average household water bill was only 82 euro per year in Germany, lower than in France or in England and Wales, but higher than in Italy. The study shows that subsidies are more prevalent in the three comparator countries and service levels are lower. Taking into account these differences, the cost of supplying water at an equalized service level would be 84 euros in Germany, 106 euro in both France and England/Wales, and 74 euro in Italy. The apparent discrepancy between higher unit tariffs and lower bills is due to the lower water consumption in Germany. Water tariffs have remained stable in real terms over the past ten years.

Comparison of annual water and sanitation bills per capita in four EU countries

	Water tariff	Sewer tariff	Total
Germany	85 euro	111 euro	196 euro
England and Wales	95 euro	93 euro	188 euro
France	85 euro	90 euro	175 euro
Italy	59 euro	40 euro	99 euro

Source: Metropolitan Consulting Group: VEWA - Vergleich europäischer Wasser- und Abwasserpreise, 2006, p. 7 of the executive summary

Concerning sanitation, unequalized tariffs are by far the highest in Germany at 111 euro per year. Equalized costs net of subsidies are, however, highest in England and Wales with 138 euro, followed by France (122 euro), Germany (119 euro) and Italy (85 euro).

Metering

Metering is widespread in Germany and almost universal for single family homes. However, many apartments do not have their own meter, so that households living in apartments where only the consumption of the entire house is metered have little financial incentive to conserve water.

Investments and Financing

In 2005 investments stood at 7.8 billion euros, including 5.5 billion euros for sanitation and 2.3 billion euros for water supply. Financing is predominantly through debt and ultimately through user fees. Commercial debt is issued directly by the municipalities in the form of municipal bonds (Kommunalanleihen) or by utilities. The development Bank KfW

KFW

KFW may refer to:*Keith Fullerton Whitman , an American musician*KfW or Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, a German public-sector financial institution...

also provides long-term credit for up to 30 years (Kommunalkredit) for municipal investments, including water supply and sanitation.

According to the professional associations of the sector there is no investment backlog (Investitionsstau).

External links

UBA Federal Environmental Agency – technical agency under the Ministry of Environment UBA
DVGW - An association of professionals and utilities in gas distribution and water supply that assists the federal government in setting technical norms, providing training and advances the professional development of its members DVWG
DWA - An association of professionals in water and sanitation and water resources management that assists the federal government in setting technical norms, providing training and advances the professional development of its members DWA
VKU - The association of municipal electricity, gas, water and sanitation utilities VKU
International Benchmarking-Network for water and sanitation(IB-net) IB-Net

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Access to water and sanitation

Water use

Water resources and public water supply

Service quality

Consumer perceptions

Human resources

Infrastructure

Service provision

Water supply

Sanitation

Examples of large water and sanitation service providers

Policy and regulation

Business associations

Recent developments: debate on liberalization and modernization

Water losses

Benchmarking

Tariffs and cost recovery

Legal framework

Tariff levels

Metering

Investments and Financing

Further reading

External links