The Offenbach City and District Water Supply Association (ZWO) promotes a good 20 million cubic meters of drinking water a year.

Of this, the city of Offenbach consumes six to seven million cubic meters, the larger part is accounted for by the district.

However, the resources from which the association can draw have been declining for years, mainly due to a lack of precipitation and climate change.

For this reason, last year the association commissioned two engineering firms to collect data on the basis of which a municipal water concept is to be developed that will look at the city's water supply up to 2050.

Jochen Remert

Airport editor and correspondent Rhein-Main-Süd.

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Thanks to the cooperation with all the agencies involved, it will soon be possible to get a “good overview of the data available for drinking water supply, drinking water use and industrial water use”, said Mayor Sabine Groß (Die Grünen), head of the environmental department.

The aim must be to deal with the increasing scarcity of water in such a way that in the end the available amount of drinking water is "enough for everyone in the long term and in the future," explained Groß.

The head of department has warned several times that the groundwater at around 48 percent of all measuring points in Hesse is "significantly below the level required for security of supply".

Groundwater from more than 100 wells

According to the association, it is possible in principle to supplement the increasingly scarce groundwater with river water from the Main, for example, but only after complex treatment.

The municipal water concept will therefore focus primarily on ways of saving drinking water, for example by using process water, as the city also states in a statement.

In this sense, the new precipitation water statute should also work, as well as the new "Danger Prevention Ordinance for the Restriction of Drinking Water Consumption" and the unsealing guideline.

The association draws groundwater from more than 100 wells, which is pumped to the surface from a depth of 25 to 75 meters.

It is then sent via a piping system to one of six waterworks, where it is treated.