The 2020 EU DWD, particularly Article 17, mandates the provision of public access to information on drinking water. The purpose of this improved information access and transparency is described as “it should increase citizens’ confidence in the water supplied to them, as well as in water services, and should lead to an increased use of tap water as drinking water, which could contribute to reduced plastic usage and litter and greenhouse gas emissions, and a positive impact on climate change mitigation and the environment as a whole.”
Our study reveals the challenges of actively sharing water quality information with the public, because public information remains uneven both between the countries and according to size of supply. Only Denmark, Greenland and Finland have a national, central, publicly searchable database with water quality information in place. The Jupiter database serves Denmark and Greenland and Vesi serves Finland, but the other countries lack such resources. Jupiter is dependent on end-users’ knowledge, and since the database is in Danish, its use in Greenland may be constrained by language barriers. Finland’s collaborative database for water quality data is accessible, but there are concerns about its coverage of smaller systems. There is also limited relevance of Vesi in Åland, where the most commonly spoken language is Swedish, because of the language barrier.
Small supplies typically rely on SMS, social media or door-to-door bulletin for communication to users. National surveillance authorities, outside Finland, Denmark and Greenland using Vesi and Jupiter, usually have a website where microbiological and chemical results for large and medium size supplies are sometimes uploaded. Large supplies have their own websites with this information whereas such websites are rare for the smaller ones. For small supplies water quality information is mostly only available on request. Regular legal national reporting of water quality exists but is patchy in practice. Implementation of EU DWD Article 17 on information to the public has the potential to advance Sustainable Development Goal 6 by providing comprehensive information on water that is delivered to all end-users and fosters perceptions of supplier transparency, thereby increasing confidence in water.