The conditions have not always been as good and surprises may occur. A recent example from 2002–3 was the dry season, which caused a lack of water and other problems in especially areas with scattered settlements. But all in all the situation is good. In the early 2000’s the waterworks provided 250 litres of water a day for private use. For industrial purposes, the figure is 20 000 litres, but industry gets only a small amount of its water from public waterworks. The total consumption of communities and industry is 7.5 per cent of the renewable water resources.
There are even in suburban areas 40 000 people and in sparsely populated areas more than half a million people who remain outside the water supply network. Approximately 300 000 people have some impurities in their domestic water and one million people living in houses have their own sewer systems, without a connection to a sewer system.
The reason for this mainly good situation nowadays is the right choices in the past. The 19th century was a time of increasing environmental problems in Finnish cities. Old water supply systems became inadequate when the population increased. The contemporary term for the situation was the “water question” – nowadays is called the “water issue”– and the answer to the issue was sought for decades.
Water being largely a local issue, it is no wonder that even in a country like Finland, with only 5.5 million people, different cultures exist. It proves that the management methods found appropriate in one environment do not necessarily fit others.
Acknowledgments
We thank VEPATUKI Water Research Cluster from support (http://www.cadwes.com/
vepatuki/).
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Authors
Dr. Rajala is a Senior Researcher at Tampere University. Her areas of expertise and research interest are water services management, sustainable water and sanitation services, and environmental history.
Dr. Juuti is historian and Adjunct Professor/Docent in Development of Water Services and Municipal Infrastructure (in Tampere University), Finnish History (in University of Turku), Adjunct Professor in Environmental History (in Tampere University), and in History of Technology (in University of Oulu). He holds the UNESCO Co-Chair in Sustainable Water Services at Tampere University.
Dr. Katko holds the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Water Services at Tampere University. He is Adjunct Professor / Docent in tampere University. He has a long, distinguished career in water services research with hundreds of publications.