Opinion

The cost of clean water

Richard Hall3 Jun 2010

Bailing out the banks was expensive enough, you might have thought, but the cost of clean water could run even deeper.

For comparison, this year’s unprecedented UK government deficit is around £160bn, and the latest support for the entire eurozone amounted to €750bn.

Now look at these figures for water:

An estimated €433bn is needed each year worldwide to maintain and improve water treatment plants and distribution networks, according to the Global Water Intelligence 2010 market report for the World Bank and OECD. This is three times current spending levels.
As if that wasn’t enough, it would apparently take $6.5tn (as in 000bn) for the US and Canada to update their water infrastructure by 2030, according to a 2007 study by Booz Allen Hamilton and reported in The Economist on 22 May. The amount worldwide was calculated at $22.6tn.

Yes, $22,600,000,000,000.

Richard Hall is chairman of Zenith International. You can also read his blog at BevBlog.

About the author

Richard Hall is chairman of Zenith International.