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 121 liter/capita/day in 2010.
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.
Read more about this topic: Water Supply And Sanitation In Germany
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