Regional governance vis-a-vis water supply and wastewater disposal: research and applied science in two disconnected fields

Abstract

Water supply and wastewater disposal constitute a key stake in the sustainable development of urban regions. The provision of urban water management is often the responsibility of the municipalities. Currently, extensive governance challenges for the optimizing of water supply and wastewater disposal emerge. Based on an analysis of three German urban regions, the paper argues that there is an increasing need to enter into regional collaboration for the strategic further development of urban water management. From a spatial research perspective, therefore, the so far severely neglected intersection between infrastructure governance and regional governance is elucidated in its various dimensions.

Keywords:

• water supply
• wastewater disposal
• regional governance
• spatial planning
• Germany

Notes

1. Only about 530 of the water supply companies are in the five East German states, whereas Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg have about 3700.

2. For an overview of large European water companies, see Hall and Lobina (2012).

3. The ‘Blueprint to Safeguard Europe’s Water Resources’ aims, among other things, at increased efforts towards water conservation, but also at the further reduction of water consumption. The latter increases the problems caused by decreasing consumption described above.

4. To eliminate the micro-pollutants mentioned above (e.g. pharmaceutical products, hormones, lead and zinc), to reduce the amount of nitrogen and to achieve additional levels of hygiene.

5. Collaboration is preferred, for example, to benchmarking, which until now has been implemented much more often in practice.

6. Regarding the dependent variable, it is assumed that there is a high interdependency between water and regional governance, but that present governance forms in household water management are dysfunctional and less integrated regionally, and that they receive no systematic support, e.g. from spatial planning. The causes of this are explained by using different governance patterns and divergent planning practices in different urban regions as the independent variable.

7. For the comprehensive study, see Schmidt (2013).