6. Clean water and sanitation

Water is fundamental to life on Earth and a prerequisite for human health and for living a decent life. Water is also essential for food and energy production. The goal is about ensuring that everyone has access to safe and affordable drinking water and adequate and equitable sanitation. It also means improving water quality by reducing pollutant discharges, improving wastewater treatment, increasing recycling and creating more efficient water use. It also means protecting and restoring water-related ecosystems (Glokala Sverige n.d.).

The goal in a local context

As a municipality, the City of Malmö has a responsibility for access to drinking water and wastewater in the city. This responsibility is regulated, for example, in EU legislation and in the Swedish Environmental Code. Although there is good access to clean water, there is a major challenge in reducing pollution and eutrophication of watercourses and lakes, which can lead to poorer access to clean water over time. Here, the municipality has a responsibility both as a producer of water and wastewater and as a scrutinising authority. The management of wastewater treatment is also a challenge, not least because heavy rainfall causing flooding is becoming more frequent and more severe and the population is growing, which increases the pressure on the sewerage system and challenges its capacity to treat the water that flows into the sea, rivers and lakes.

What it looks like in Malmö

Water use and access

Malmö's environmental objectives emphasise that water should be managed sustainably. To achieve this, groundwater and drinking water resources need to be protected and utilised in a sustainable way. Drinking water in Malmö comes from three different sources, Vombsjön, Bolmen and groundwater in Grevie, with approximately 70 per cent coming from Vombsjön (Miljöbarometern n.d.). Although there is good access to water for Malmö, more resource-efficient use is needed to maintain a sustainable water supply.

Total drinking water use in Malmö has been around 26 million cubic metres of water per year since 2015 with a peak use in 2021 of 26.8 million cubic metres. Since 2006, when use peaked during the period under review, water use per person in Malmö has decreased by almost 29 cubic metres (Miljöbarometern n.d.). Malmö's population has increased significantly since 2004 and with an increase of about 5 000 people per year, this has a major impact on the reduction per person.

The extraction of groundwater in Grevietäkten, from the aquifer called Alnarpsströmmen, has varied over the years since the reservoir was commissioned in the early 1900s. Today, the abstraction is less than half of the highest abstraction levels, which were measured in the 1980s, which is positive. However, there has been a clear decline in the groundwater level from the 1970s to the present day, with a difference in level of about one metre (Miljöbarometern n.d.).

Preserving and restoring water-related ecosystems

In addition to a good supply of drinking water, we also need to ensure that this supply is maintained over time by preserving and restoring the ecosystems that provide us with ecosystem services such as clean water.

Of the watercourses where measurements were taken in 2009, 2016 and 2021, none of the watercourses achieved good ecological status, nor good chemical status (Miljöbarometern n.d.). The national objective is for all Swedish waters to achieve at least good status by 2027. Part of the explanation for our waters not achieving good ecological status is that the amount of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, is too high. In Malmö, the levels of nitrogen and phosphorus have tended to decrease in the watercourses since the 1990s, but there are watercourses where the levels are increasing. There is a large variation in how much nutrients run off into the watercourses, which is due to annual variations in precipitation (Miljöbarometern n.d.). To achieve the targets, further work is needed to reduce the transport of nutrients from the land from which the water in the watercourses originates.

The status of watercourses ultimately also affects the ecological and chemical status of the sea, as watercourses flow into the sea and carry nutrients and pollutants with them. Wastewater treatment also affects the status of the sea, and it is therefore important that wastewater treatment can deal with the water that ends up in sewers, both from households and businesses and from stormwater runoff. Since the 2020 base year, emissions of nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen have increased, as have emissions of other chemicals such as copper, chromium, zinc and nickel (Miljöbarometern n.d.). This adds to the already poor chemical status of the water. However, there are pollutants that are decreasing in quantity, such as arsenic. Levels of the heavy metals lead, mercury and cadmium are measured periodically in groundwater. The levels have been measured from 2000 until 2020, which is the latest measurement date. In 2020, the levels of mercury and cadmium were at roughly the same levels as in 2000, but the level of lead had decreased over the same period (Miljöbarometern n.d.).

In addition to the water that flows into the sea from the watercourses, there is also the amount of stormwater that bypasses the treatment process when, for example, large amounts of rain fall. When this happens, the treatment system cannot cope with the amount of water and it is causes an overflow. The amount of overflowing water has increased since 2020, which means that a larger amount of untreated water is being released into nature (Miljöbarometern n.d.). The consequences of this overflow have been reduced to some extent with the help of so-called rainwater basins where some treatment can be done before discharge.

Indicators

6.1 Drinking water use, total volume, million cubic meters (m³)

6.2 Drinking water consumption per capita, cubic meters (m³) per person

6.3 Groundwater bodies with good chemical and quantitative status, percentage (%)

6.4 Watercourses with good ecological status, percentage (%)

6.5 Water sources with a water protection zone, percentage (%)

6.6 Volume of overflowed water, cubic meters (m³)

References

Glokala Sverige (u.å.). Arbetsbok – Agenda 2030. Tillgänglig: https://fn.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Arbetsbok_Glokala_Sverige_2021.pdf

Miljöbarometern (u.å.). Miljöbarometern. Tillgänglig: https://miljobarometern.malmo.se/