WaterSubject

The objective of the paper is to investigate the attitudes and preferences of the residential water users of the city of Thessaloniki, in order to evaluate the demand management aspects of the urban water policy. A field survey has been conducted in the city of Thessaloniki and investigated among others the reliability of the utility’s services and infrastructure, the acceptability of various water demand options, the willingness to pay of the consumers and the level of public awareness. Straightforward comparisons with the results of a similar survey five years ago help extract useful remarks and conclusions concerning the shift of the urban water policy towards integrated and therefore more sustainable directions.

Water planners, managers as well as different users have to deal with many challenges as we have passed the threshold of the 21st century. Today, rapid population growth, depletion and contamination of groundwater, scarcity of untapped water sources, competitive use of water and the increase of the frequency of droughts is bringing about the intensive need to develop alternative schemes to manage water resources in an integrated manner.

The traditional response to water demand has been the development of additional water supply. The engineering-oriented solutions given so far to increase supply, led to irreversible environmental deadlocks responsible for the current situation. Little attention has been given to the objective of water conservation through the options that control and modify water demand. Economic incentives, water pricing policies, public participation and awareness, as well as education and information strategies are today powerful demand management tools, making this option the more environmentally friendly and at the same time economically effective alternative solution to balance supply and demand.

The reorientation of urban water policy towards more sustainable directions is closely connected with the use of demand management practices. This shift requires integration of engineering, environmental, as well as social and economic aspects of water supply planning and management.

The end users and the receivers of a new integrated demand-oriented water policy are the water consumers. This means that urban water utilities in order to proceed to integrated policies have to investigate and take into account the social aspects, which decisively affect and formulate demand management options.

The water users, as well as the general public who may affect and be affected by water management decisions, should be a part of the decision-making process. Public preferences and trends should be included and taken into account in analyzing alternatives and their economic effects. Decisions have to be based on public choices in order to minimize resentment. The public must have a voice in decisions of significant impact, such as water conservation. The better the suppliers understand their consumers the more effectively they will be able to communicate with them.

In our days that the shift towards integrated water management has become evident, social and economic aspects of demand management need to be further explored and analyzed. In this context, and taking into account the fact that social acceptability is a decisive factor for the success of any new water supply plans and policies, the Water Agency of the city of Thessaloniki in cooperation with Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, have decided to conduct a field survey to a sample of 2170 customers in the greater metropolitan area of the city of Thessaloniki. The objective of the survey was to investigate the preferences, attitudes and trends of the citizens with reference to the demand management aspects of the current as well as of alternative water policies. The results of a previous similar survey (1995) permit straightforward comparisons that lead to useful remarks and conclusions concerning the evolution of the social parameters of the urban water policy. Incorporating the social factor into urban water supply management and planning is among the utility’s first priorities in the effort to apply an integrated and therefore more sustainable urban water policy.

• Low reliability level of the water supply infrastructure, mostly connected with frequent water breakdowns and the use of additional water deposit devices to manage serious operational problems in the water supply network. The renewal of the old and low maintained infrastructure, as well as the restoration of the reliability of the water supply network should be among the first priorities of the water utility since its objective is to upgrade its services to the consumers.

• Low trust of tap water quality mainly due to odour and taste problems. The use of additional cleaning water devices, as well as the use of bottled water, are the respondents’ alternatives to water quality problems. Since all quality requirements are fulfilled according to the quality standards, an effective tool to gain people’s trust might be an information strategy through the publication of current water quality analyses from the national laboratory and their comparison with the relevant analyses for the bottled water.

• Low acceptability of water demand management options. Traditional engineering-oriented policies are still considered to be more effective comparing to the environmentally friendly and in the same time economically efficient demand management ones. The utility’s effort should be therefore concentrated on the promotion of the advantages of the demand management options, through educational programs and information campaigns.

• Bad perception of water consumption levels. The respondents’ self-characterization concerning their attitude towards water consumption and water saving doesn’t depict reality. People can hardly have objective sense of how they act as consumers. This is a limiting factor for the implementation of any demand management policy and needs to be seriously taken into account by the utility.

• Limited effect of price on residential water demand. A normal increase in water price doesn’t seem to have positive impact on consumers’ water consumption. A possible explanation to that may be that considering the rather low current water price, the respondents are not able to imagine such an increase sufficient to force them to reduce consumption. Water pricing and cost recovery are still unexplored options in the effort to control demand and reduce consumption, needing further analysis and study.

• Low WTP levels for improvements in water services. The preferred maximum 10–20% raise in the water price is mostly connected with the low reliability of the water services. The current water price seems not to reflect the quality of services. It becomes clear that the acceptability and efficiency of any new water pricing policy is closely connected with the improvement of water services.

• High level of public awareness concerning current and future water related problems. This is an indication of the fact that there is ground for the implementation of a public information strategy promoting the advantages of demand management options in the urban water supply sector. The relative underestimation of the importance of the water availability problems in comparison to the water quality ones, shows the direction towards which the utility should move its public awareness policy in the future.