Drinking water plays a key role in Danish elections

Drinking water plays a key role in the elections in Denmark. Danish media noted this during an election debate between two prime ministerial candidates on TV 2 Denmark on Sunday evening March 8. Pesticides in groundwater and nitrate pollution are hot election issues when Danes go to the general election on March 24. When Danish TV 2 began the series Topmødet with duels between prime ministerial candidates, drinking water and groundwater protection were one of five themes discussed.

This week, the Liberal Party, the party of Troel Lund Poelsen, which has been a government partner with the Social Democrats during the current period, rejected demands for a national spraying ban in vulnerable groundwater areas. Instead, they want to base drinking water protection on voluntary agreements with agriculture, an agreement known as the Green Tripartite Agreement. The Social Democrats, for their part, have opened up to a national spraying ban to protect drinking water. So have the Conservative People’s Party, the Radical Left and the Moderates, among others.

Lack of protection drinking water sources

The industry organisation Danske Vandværker welcomes the possibilities that could lead to a spraying ban. The country is in principle completely dependent on groundwater for drinking water production, but protection is weak in the predominantly agricultural country, Danske Vandværker believes. The industry organisation believes that the protection of drinking water was originally a central part of the Green Tripartite Agreement’s terms of reference. But since then, drinking water has been almost completely written out of the stakeholder agreement, they believe, pointing to new data from Funen, where only a fraction of the groundwater has been protected. As expected, this has unfortunately had major consequences. There are many places on Funen where groundwater is not protected in the existing restructuring plans. And this is happening despite us knowing how important it is to take measures to secure future drinking water, says Lise Lotte Toft, CEO of Danske Vandværker, in a press release.

80% of drinking water sources polluted

According to data from the Ministry of the Environment, pesticides are found in more than half of the country’s drinking water wells. The levels rise in the upper soil layers, where over 80 percent of groundwater wells contain pesticides. Circulation has reported on several occasions in recent years about worrying findings of pesticide residues in Danish groundwater sources.

This article was published first by the Swedish platform for water professionals cirkulation.se