No rain, high temperatures, water boards that warn of low water levels. We are all very busy with the drought. That scares us a little. Because, what if there will be no drinking water anymore? “Well, we don’t have to be afraid of that in Brabant,” says drinking water supplier Brabant Water.
We are lucky in Brabant. We drink water of the highest quality, many people will not taste the difference with spring water. According to Pyter Hiemstra of Brabant Water, the water supplier of our province, they sometimes get that water hundreds of meters deep from the ground. “Many people think of groundwater as the water you encounter when you dig a hole in the ground. That is also groundwater. But our drinking water comes out of the ground two football fields. It is water that sometimes fell down as rain thousands of years ago.”
So it’s not immediately over if there is no rain for a year?
Hiemstra: ”When someone is concerned about the groundwater, he is usually talking about the shallow groundwater. If you dig a hole of a few meters in your backyard, you will encounter water. That’s where the groundwater starts. There are many water-bearing layers in our soil. The drinking water comes very deep from that subsoil. And that happened a long time ago.”
Still, you want us to be economical with drinking water?
“Correct. Drinking water is a very special product in Brabant. It is hundreds of years old and completely purified by nature. It’s very beautiful water. We ask everyone to be aware that the water comes from your own environment. So less water consumption is always better. In Brabant we get the water from the ground, in other parts of the Netherlands they drink water from the river. If the Meuse is low because of the drought, that can sometimes be a cause for concern.”
And what are those water saving tips good for?
“That has to do with peak demand. If it is very warm and the garden needs water, people will use a lot more water. Sometimes fifty percent more. Then we have trouble getting it delivered everywhere. We have dozens of places in the province where we pump the water. If the demand is too high, they have trouble keeping up with the demand.”
So we don’t have to worry about drinking water in Brabant?
“In Brabant it is really super water, very old and completely naturally purified. What is disturbing is that people on the surface all use substances such as pesticides that slowly seep into the soil. They pollute our future drinking water. And all the rainwater that is quickly drained also causes problems in the long term, because of course new water has to be added to the subsoil, so that we also have drinking water in the future.”
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