Water supply

This includes several common residential end use purposes (in decreasing order) like toilet use, showers, tap (faucet) use, washing machine use, leaks, other (unidentified), baths, and dishwasher use.

[2][better source needed] During the beginning of the 21st Century, especially in areas of urban and suburban population centers, traditional centralized infrastructure have not been able to supply sufficient quantities of water to keep up with growing demand.

Among several options that have been managed are the extensive use of desalination technology, this is especially prevalent in coastal areas and in "dry" countries like Australia.

This is especially problematic for informal settlements, which are often poorly connected to the water supply network and have no means of procuring alternative sources such as private boreholes.

An urban consumer may have 5 metres of 15-mm pipe running from the iron main, so the kitchen tap flow will be fairly unrestricted.

[citation needed] Water supply policies and regulation are usually defined by one or several Ministries, in consultation with the legislative branch.

[citation needed] Dozens of countries around the world have established regulatory agencies for infrastructure services, including often water supply and sanitation, in order to better protect consumers and to improve efficiency.

Regulatory agencies are supposed to be autonomous from the executive branch of government, but in many countries have often not been able to exercise a great degree of autonomy.

In many developing countries, water regulatory agencies were created during the 1990s in parallel with efforts at increasing private sector participation.

In rural areas, where about half the world population lives, water services are often not provided by utilities, but by community-based organizations which usually cover one or sometimes several villages.

Utilities that provide water, sanitation and electricity can be found in Frankfurt, Germany (Mainova), in Casablanca, Morocco and in Gabon in West Africa.

Multi-utilities provide certain benefits such as common billing and the option to cross-subsidize water services with revenues from electricity sales, if permitted by law.

The introduction of cost-reflective tariffs together with cross-subsidization between richer and poorer consumers is an essential governance reform in order to reduce the high levels of Unaccounted-for Water (UAW) and to provide the finance needed to extend the network to those poorest households who remain unconnected.

[7] An estimated 10 percent of urban water supply is provided by private or mixed public-private companies, usually under concessions, leases or management contracts.

In most middle and low-income countries, these publicly owned and managed water providers can be inefficient as a result of political interference, leading to over-staffing and low labor productivity.

If water supply is the responsibility of a department that is integrated in the administration of a city, town or municipality, there is a risk that tariff revenues are diverted for other purposes.

[11] Comparing the performance of water and sanitation service providers (utilities) is needed, because the sector offers limited scope for direct competition (natural monopoly).

Throughout the world, only part of these costs is usually billed to consumers, the remainder being financed through direct or indirect subsidies from local, regional or national governments (see section on tariffs).

[citation needed] Besides subsidies water supply investments are financed through internally generated revenues as well as through debt.

[citation needed] A typical family on the US East Coast paid between US$30 and US$70 per month for water and sewer services in 2005.

In developing countries, the situation is often characterized by cross-subsidies with the intent to make water more affordable for residential low-volume users that are assumed to be poor.

To meet the Millennium Development Goals targets of halving the proportion of the population lacking access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015, current annual investment on the order of US$10 to US$15 billion would need to be roughly doubled.

[19] Once infrastructure is in place, operating water supply and sanitation systems entails significant ongoing costs to cover personnel, energy, chemicals, maintenance and other expenses.

The sources of money to meet these capital and operational costs are essentially either user fees, public funds or some combination of the two.

Living in semi-arid regions, ancient Persians in the 1st millennium BC used qanat system to gain access to water in the mountains.

Early Rome had indoor plumbing, meaning a system of aqueducts and pipes that terminated in homes and at public wells and fountains for people to use.

Until the Enlightenment era, little progress was made in water supply and sanitation and the engineering skills of the Romans were largely neglected throughout Europe.

It was in the 18th century that a rapidly growing population fueled a boom in the establishment of private water supply networks in London.

[27] London water supply infrastructure developed over many centuries from early mediaeval conduits, through major 19th-century treatment works built in response to cholera threats, to modern, large-scale reservoirs.

The first treated public water supply in the world was installed by engineer James Simpson for the Chelsea Waterworks Company in London in 1829.