November 26, 2012

Water center as a Big Brother

Two weeks ago I took part in the excursion to the Odense water center organized by Work in Denmark. In Odense drink water comes from wells. In Czech Republic we mostly use water from rivers.
Lot of interesting information about water center and cleaning of water was prepared for us by students of English from the water center under supervision of their language teacher:

  • The water center buys grounds to plant forests there. It uses roots of trees as a natural system for cleaning of waste water. 
  • The water center has a monopoly to supply the city with water. All money which the company has come from consumers only. To have a motivation for improving the system, there is a fixed maximal price of water for each year given by the government. 
  • There is an environmental tax for water in Denmark to motivate inhabitants to save the water which is included after Moms (VAT or DPH in Czech republic, Moms is 25%) was added to the price of water. This means you pay a tax from a tax. The final price of the water for households is approximately 3 times higher than the price in Czech Republic. 
  • The sewerage in Odense has the same pipeline for wastewater and for rainwater, so that the wastewater treatment plant has to clean everything. In Czech Republic we mostly have separate pipelines for waste- and rainwater and family houses have to care about rainwater on their land. 
  • Water center can watch what is going on in the city like a Big Brother. If there is an important football match, consumption of water decreases. During the halftime break the water consumption grows quickly, so you can see the course of the football match in the graph of the water consumption. You can see the same trend during the royal wedding. 
Look at the bottom of the first well in Odense. Now it is a gallery.