About water in Norway

Norway is a country with abundance of freshwater. The annual freshwater resources are a whopping 377 billion cubic meters of water in lakes, glaciers, ponds, streams and some ground water. In theory this would be enough water to supply all the world's inhabitants with 150 liters of water a day!

690 million cubic meters of drinking water were produced in Norway in 2021, and 99.2 % of residents with a municipal water supply last year received drinking water of satisfactory hygienic quality. Almost 4,6 million people (of 5,5 million in total), are connected to a total of 50 000 kilometers of municipality run water pipes. Others, mostly in rural areas, get their water from their own well.

The average consumption per person was between 140 liters to 180 liters per person per day.

Challenges with water in Norway

Though tap water in Norway is free and of high quality, the main challenge is the distribution system. One in three liters of drinking water produced, disappears in leaks because the water and sewage systems in Norway have major shortcomings and replacement of old pipelines takes a long time.  At the current rate of renovation of the network, it would take 150 years to complete. This means an increased risk of contaminated drinking water.

Another issue is water shortage in Oslo, where the main source of drinking water, Maridalsvannet, has been seriously affected by little snow in winter and no rain in spring. In 2022 the municipality for example turned of the cities fountains and dropped washing city busses.  Residents were strongly encouraged to reduce their water consumption and the city is now embarking on an extensive and expensive project to obtain water from the another source (Holsfjorden).

The water sector also faces several challenges, like

• the (in)ability to build out and adapt the infrastructure to a more unpredictable climate, to maintain this expensive but vital infrastructure
• obtaining enough expertise and capacity - the sector needs more wise heads and good hands, with both engineering and professional training
• capacity in the supplier industry
• contractors will hardly be able to respond to all tenders in the water area

Thus: it will be necessary to have both central priorities and local cooperation on infrastructure projects, so that the municipalities do not have to settle for solutions that are both unnecessarily expensive for the citizens and bad for the water environment that we all want to protect.