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Sufficient Drinking Water to Safeguard the Future of CENTROPE
The European Parliament notes that around one fifth of the EU's population lives in countries experiencing stress on their water resources. The total economic impact of drought at the EU level over the last 30 years is estimated at EUR 100 billion. Thus water protection and better use of drinking water in the Danube basin are among the priorities for the development of the Danube Strategy.
The European Parliament (EP) warns that water scarcity and drought represent major challenges to economic, social and territorial cohesion in the EU. The EP highlights the importance of the regions as a driving force behind technological innovation in the field of water, given the fact that water efficiency will be an increasingly important factor for competitiveness. It urges regional authorities to consider national and international inter-regional co-operation, information exchange and strategic partnerships, with a view to organising efficient regional water management.
Valuable Water Resources
North of the Danube, the territory of the Danube plain is known as Europe’s largest resource for drinking water supply. The geological environment creates appropriate conditions for Danube water seeping through extensive gravel layers underground, attaining the highest quality by filtration through these layers of gravel. The quality of groundwater from underground storage tanks is so high that it requires no chemical treatment before introduction into water mains. This unique hydrological system is moreover constantly renewable. If we want to preserve it, it is essential not only to protect the environment around the Danube, but also to observe a number of technical parameters.
Drinking Water for Central Europe
Co-operation is a way to safeguard sufficient quantities of drinking water for the future of the CENTROPE region. Slovakia views the protection, management and rational use of water resources in the Western Slovak plain as among the priorities of the Danube Strategy. In the coming years, the Bratislava Water Company, in co-operation with cross-border partners, plans to prepare a new transport concept with the aim of bringing sufficient quantities of drinking water to more distant regions, where drinking water provision is technically more complicated and expensive. Equally important is identifying common practices for the protection of surface water and groundwater. Thus in Bratislava and its environs, there e.g. exist a number of appropriate sources whose yield permits the supply of cross-border regions in Austria, Hungary or South Moravia.
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