When Ludwig Helm first heard that a villa in his town used 80,000 liters of water a day — 625 times the daily average consumption of a one-person household in Germany — he thought the meter must be defective.
It wasn’t.
The wealthy town of Königstein, which sits on the wooded slopes of the Taunus, a mountain range near Frankfurt in Germany, counts some 98 people with annual incomes above €1 million among its 16,700 residents. Those households are driving water consumption through the roof, flouting restrictions aimed at protecting drinking water supplies as the region grapples with drought.
“Water consumption is, in fact, completely unrestrained in some cases,” said Helm, the mayor of Königstein. “People have completely forgotten that in Germany, you just don’t have an English lawn. We have different climatic conditions. But people want to have it that way.”
As groundwater levels drop in the region around Königstein, Helm has restricted when residents can water their gardens or fill up their swimming pools, in a bid to make sure the town doesn’t run out of drinking water.
But those measures aren’t working, he said — mostly because wealthy residents ignore them and local authorities lack the ability to enforce the rules.
Increasingly low groundwater levels are causing local streams and rivers to dry out, according to Thomas Norgall, deputy managing director of the Hesse branch of German NGO BUND. Against this backdrop, high water consumption by wealthy households is also starting to pit residents against each another and causing concern in nearby towns, which fear for their own water supply.
A growing number of municipalities across Europe are facing similar struggles amid a severe drought that has gripped the Continent since 2018.
The commune of Châteauneuf-Grasse near Cannes made headlines earlier this year after wealthy homeowners — most of whom are foreign nationals — were said to consumer more water in a week than most of the commune’s residents do in a year. Another 120 communes across France are currently struggling to access drinking water.
“I have several private helicopters in my municipality. Someone who can afford to refuel their helicopter will not be inconvenienced to pay a €1,500 fine or double in case of recidivism,” Emmanuel Delmotte, Châteauneuf-Grasse’s mayor, told Le Figaro at the time. “And then the fine will not solve the lack of water.”
Frustrated, local authorities and NGOs are calling on national governments and the EU to help control water demand with measures ranging from rethinking water pricing systems to overhauling how drinking water is distributed between residential homes, industry and agriculture.
Dramatically increasing water prices once a household uses up a certain quantity, Helm argued, would “make it clear that this kind of excess consumption is just not normal.”
What a waste
Nearly one-third of Europeans are affected by water stress, according to the European Environment Agency. That is expected to worsen as droughts become more frequent and more intense with climate change.
A study published in the journal Nature found that “unsustainable water use by the elite can exacerbate urban water crises at least as much as climate change or population growth.”
That makes changing consumption habits a priority for drought-ridden areas. But it’s also a structural problem, researchers and environmentalists say. Fixing that will require “fundamentally rethinking water consumption and emphasizing saving water much more,” Norgall said.
Some regional politicians agree and are calling for an overhaul. Elisabeth Kula, chair of far-left Die Linke in Hesse’s regional parliament, said in a June parliamentary debate that “valuable drinking water” was being wasted in “flushing toilets and in the … pools for the rich.”
As part of its national water strategy adopted in March, Germany said it wants to save drinking water by integrating rainwater into water systems for non-drinking uses.
As flaws in current water management systems become more apparent, calls for the EU to take action are growing louder.
Brussels has a number of rules to protect and manage freshwater resources, including its main law on drinking water. But “existing tools remain fragmented” and are “not well integrated across all EU policies,” according to the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), a body that represents civil society organizations and advises EU institutions.
The EESC is slated to present proposals for an EU Blue Deal — mirroring the bloc’s green transition plans — in October. The European Commission, it argues, needs “to start addressing water as a priority at European scale.”
According to Florian Marin, a Romanian member of the EESC, developing an EU-wide approach to water prices is crucial in tackling water scarcity.
Water should be free to consume up to a certain threshold, after which tariffs could be applied, he argued. Private households should also benefit from cheaper prices than other sectors, such as industry, according to Marin.
In most countries, including Germany and France, water-guzzling industries tend to pay much less for drinking water than private households, despite consuming a much larger share.
But Brussels should also develop standards for each sector — including private households — to regulate water use, Marin added, emphasizing that drinking water should not be used to fill up pools.
EU lawmakers have also expressed support for a bloc-wide water strategy.
Emma Wiesner, an MEP with the liberal Renew group, last month advocated in favor of a Blue Deal, arguing that “water is a basic right for every citizen.” The EU, she said, needs to tackle the issue “before more conflicts arise within or even between member states.”
Source : Politico
