CHAPTER 2 - Water Supply Regulation, Protection, Organisation and Financing

Abstract

To ensure a safe supply many governments require their water supply authorities to comply with the water quality standards recommended by the WHO as a minimum. Some countries set extensive national water quality standards, which are legally enforceable, and systems of inspection may be used to ensure they are achieved. However, compliance with such standards is expensive; consequently countries with low per capita incomes may need to limit national standards to those that require the water to be free of bacteriological contamination and substances obviously injurious to health. The manner of development of public water supplies across Europe was influenced by the interplay between differing administrative and legal systems (Newman, 1996) and by differing cultures. Centralizing influences include monarchies, Napoleon and communism. Decentralizing influences include federal governments and the strength of municipalities who were instrumental in water supply development in most European countries. In France this interplay led to the operation, by a few large companies, of a large number of supplies owned by municipalities. This contrasts with a process, more widespread elsewhere, of transfer of private commercial water supply systems to public ownership in order to better control quality and meet the needs of all citizens. Private participation in public water supplies in Europe has a long history from early commercial enterprises, to long-term concessions in several large cities such as Barcelona and to privatization in the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe.