reduced, especially during dry summers. The lack of such agreements also delays
authorization for the establishment of new drinking water production facilities.
Political will to develop a legal framework seems to be lacking, but there is also a
problem of leverage of the French government.
Drinking water standards, wastewater discharges, and other issues are also
governed by the Water Framework Directive across EU countries. It was noticed
that EU environmental policies seem to play an important role to introduce a more
holistic and synergistic approach to drinking water supply and the management of
the reservoirs. At the same time some stakeholders interviewed in Eifel-Rur
expressed criticism of EU regulations, which are seen as “imposed from Brussels”.
The existence of such a “distant” authority has shown to be beneficial when
unpopular measures must be pushed by the water boards, as they can argue that
they have no choice but to comply with EU directives.
11.5 Awareness and the Public and Political Agenda
The interview campaigns held within the DROP project highlighted that the broad
public is in general unaware of the risks and challenges water providers are facing
due to drought. Users are accustomed to a high quality of service 24 h a day, 7 days
a week; service interruption is seen as someone not having done his homework,
rather than a possibility that can arise as a result of different natural risks to service
provision. In addition, stakeholders highlighted that the broad public is typically
unaware of the sources of their drinking water. In the Eifel-Rur region, for instance,
the overall public perception is that the reservoirs provide other more visible services than drinking water, such as flood protection or opportunities for sailing and
tourism attraction. This lack of awareness is a drawback when trying to communicate drought risks to the broader public (La Jeunesse et al. 2015).
Communication on droughts faces additional challenges in these flood-prone
regions. These highly visible impacting events convey to the broader public the idea
that a certain region’s problems are related to dealing with too much water, and not
too little of it, as far as reservoirs are managed for protection against floods and also
sustain stream flows during low-flows periods. Conveying the concept that flood
risk does not imply an absence of drought risk is a communicational challenge.
Awareness of the topic among stakeholder groups seems not much higher than
that of the broader public. Stakeholders, in general, do not consider drought and
water scarcity issue as urgent from their perspective, and there is a lot of interest in
keeping up business as usual or even in expanding water uses. The exceptions to
this rule are the drinking water providers themselves—some proof is given by the
fact that the water boards IAV and WVER are part of the DROP project, and in
Flanders drinking water providers also counted this issue as on their agenda.
Beyond drinking water providers, some environmental authorities considered were
showing interest in the issue, fundamentally due to the environmental problems that
could derive of the low flows. Somewhat surprisingly, environmental NGOs in the
11 Cross-cutting Perspective Freshwater
227
authorization for the establishment of new drinking water production facilities.
Political will to develop a legal framework seems to be lacking, but there is also a
problem of leverage of the French government.
Drinking water standards, wastewater discharges, and other issues are also
governed by the Water Framework Directive across EU countries. It was noticed
that EU environmental policies seem to play an important role to introduce a more
holistic and synergistic approach to drinking water supply and the management of
the reservoirs. At the same time some stakeholders interviewed in Eifel-Rur
expressed criticism of EU regulations, which are seen as “imposed from Brussels”.
The existence of such a “distant” authority has shown to be beneficial when
unpopular measures must be pushed by the water boards, as they can argue that
they have no choice but to comply with EU directives.
11.5 Awareness and the Public and Political Agenda
The interview campaigns held within the DROP project highlighted that the broad
public is in general unaware of the risks and challenges water providers are facing
due to drought. Users are accustomed to a high quality of service 24 h a day, 7 days
a week; service interruption is seen as someone not having done his homework,
rather than a possibility that can arise as a result of different natural risks to service
provision. In addition, stakeholders highlighted that the broad public is typically
unaware of the sources of their drinking water. In the Eifel-Rur region, for instance,
the overall public perception is that the reservoirs provide other more visible services than drinking water, such as flood protection or opportunities for sailing and
tourism attraction. This lack of awareness is a drawback when trying to communicate drought risks to the broader public (La Jeunesse et al. 2015).
Communication on droughts faces additional challenges in these flood-prone
regions. These highly visible impacting events convey to the broader public the idea
that a certain region’s problems are related to dealing with too much water, and not
too little of it, as far as reservoirs are managed for protection against floods and also
sustain stream flows during low-flows periods. Conveying the concept that flood
risk does not imply an absence of drought risk is a communicational challenge.
Awareness of the topic among stakeholder groups seems not much higher than
that of the broader public. Stakeholders, in general, do not consider drought and
water scarcity issue as urgent from their perspective, and there is a lot of interest in
keeping up business as usual or even in expanding water uses. The exceptions to
this rule are the drinking water providers themselves—some proof is given by the
fact that the water boards IAV and WVER are part of the DROP project, and in
Flanders drinking water providers also counted this issue as on their agenda.
Beyond drinking water providers, some environmental authorities considered were
showing interest in the issue, fundamentally due to the environmental problems that
could derive of the low flows. Somewhat surprisingly, environmental NGOs in the
11 Cross-cutting Perspective Freshwater
227