Trinkwasserversorgung#
Drinking Water Supply: More than 185 waterworks are members of the Oesterreichische Vereinigung fuer das Gas- und Wasserfach (OeVGW, Austrian gas and water authorities). These waterworks supply drinking water for almost 5.1 million Austrians (63.3% of the Austrian population). 1.08 million Austrians are supplied by smaller regional waterworks, thus almost 7 million Austrians are supplied by central water supply systems. Only about 1 million have their own supply systems (wells, springs). The total amount of water withdrawn in Austria in 1993 was about 730 million m3. About equal amounts of groundwater and springwater are utilized by the Austrian waterworks (mainly on account of the existence of a special springwater supply system for Vienna). The amount of surface water utilized for the provision of drinking water is less than 1%.
The entire length of the water pipe network of the Austrian waterworks
is about 26,000 km, of which more than 20,000 km are
distribution pipes and the remaining 6,000 are supply pipes. The
waterworks have installed more than 599,000 connections with about
615,000 meters to measure the volume of water used. In 1993 the
waterworks made investments of about 1.1 billion ATS supply
areas with more than 20,000 inhabitants. The average daily consumption
of water in Austrian households is 130-135 l/per head. The
highest water authority in Austria is the Federal Ministry of
Agriculture and Forestry.