The total extraction of water is 980 million cubic meters per year. The water is almost exclusively ground water with less than half a percent being surface water. To encourage municipalities to reduce water spillage, the national Government has introduced a surtax of just under one dollar per lost cubic meter of water payable by the municipalities. So far, the increased attention does not yet seem to have inspired major initiatives to improve the situation. However, the Embassy believes that steadily increasing attention to the need for and value of preserving the country's supplies of quality fresh drinking water will soon bring about major investments in this segment of Denmark's infrastructure.
Opportunities appear to exist in at least two areas.
The most obvious are found in the increased maintenance and repair work expected to take place on the water line systems. Although such work is ongoing, there is a recognized backlog of investments in the vast pipe system. This backlog is expected to materialize soon in the form of additional projects. A major component of such projects are unavoidably found in local contract work, but export opportunities exist in supplying the necessary materials. Such opportunities, however, will be most tangible for suppliers of new or different technologies, especially as these apply to reducing the manual work involved.