The public-private-partnership approach: a solution for water distribution and wastewater drainage in megacities

A serious problem of the beginning millennium that is already evident is the water distribution in and the wastewater removal from very large cities. Even in the very large European cities with their water distribution networks built in the course of the 20th century the maintenance and extension of the networks are creating difficulties. The retrofit of the systems is becoming more and more uneconomic, and costs have got out of control. Moreover, in some of these cities wastewater treatment systems are not even available for the whole discharge. In developing countries the situation is yet worse. And as far as megacities are concerned, both for water supply and drainage the problems are again larger — due to the huge dimensions. In the industrialized countries technical problems grow, and economic and viable solutions for developing countries are pending.