Event Planning | Green Meetings & CSR | A city worth living in | Water Management

Water Management

Drinking Water
The Viennese rave about "their" water. The tab water originates in the Lower Austrian-Styrian Alps, being transferred with the well-known First and Second Vienna Mountain Spring Pipeline (MSP).

The water reaches Vienna without pumps through galleries by exploiting the natural drop resulting from the difference in altitude. The gravitational energy is even made use of along the course of the pipeline to generate electricity. Due to extensive spring protection, the water needs no treatment.

Vienna finds itself in the unique situation of covering almost all of its drinking water demand from mountain springs; only a small portion - about 5% of the annual consumption - is obtained by means of groundwater works, only used in case of mountain spring pipeline repairs, severe pipeline damage or extremely high water consumption volumes during hot spells.

Since 2006, parts of the water volume additionally pass through a Francis turbine, generating fully three million kilowatt-hours of energy per year and supplying 1,000 households with electricity.

Already today, the pipeline-based power plants in the spring zones and along the Second MSP produce approximately 65 million kilowatt-hours of energy per year. The responsible Municipal Department (MA 31) operates several power plants which even supply entire villages with electricity.

The generation of "green" energy from mountain spring water permits using the fundamental resource water in a novel, ecologically valuable manner.

Vienna Water Charta
Since 2001 Vienna is the only city in the world which has placed the Vienna drinking water under protection of the constitution. With the Vienna Water Charta the famous Mountain Spring water shall remain a basic resource for future generations.

Waste Water
Waste water management plays an important role for securing the quality of life in Vienna. Virtually 100% of the population are connected to the public sewer network which puts Vienna in the international comparison on a top ranking.

Besides the correction of diverse defects, the responsible authority continuously develops and realises new strategies and technologies but also takes preventive actions and thus accounts very much to the continuous improvement of Vienna's high environment quality.