From Straight Canals to Water-Smart Societies: How De Watergroep Is Navigating Europe’s Water Transition
Executive Exchange — Episode feature with Hans Goossens, CEO, De Watergroep
In this episode of the Exec Exchange, Dr. Piers Clark speaks with Hans Goossens, Chief Executive of De Watergroep, about a shift that is no longer theoretical or optional: the water transition.
Not just a sector transition, Hans argues, but a societal one – driven not by policy fashion, but by the hard physics of climate extremes.
From Fertilisers to Faucets: A CEO Shaped by Scarcity
Before joining De Watergroep seven years ago, Hans spent almost 25 years with Norsk Hydro / Yara International, the global fertiliser group.
That career took him through:
- R&D and innovation
- Operations and quality management
- Product management and commercial roles
- Global exposure to agriculture, food production, and water risk
In the fertiliser business, water scarcity is both a threat and an opportunity: when crops fail, so do customers; when systems are optimised, the entire value chain benefits.
That background means Hans now leads De Watergroep with a very particular lens: water is not just a utility input, it’s a strategic constraint on food, industry, and society.
De Watergroep: From Drinking Water Utility to Integral Water Company
De Watergroep was founded more than a century ago as a national company in Belgium. Today it is:
- The Flemish public water company
- Serving around 3.4 million people
- Across 177 municipalities
- With ~1,600 employees
- Providing both drinking water and wastewater services
In other words, it has evolved from a classic drinking water provider into an integral water company.
Hans may no longer be racking up airline miles, but he hasn’t lost the international thread. As President of Water Europe, he’s deeply involved in shaping the innovation and technology agenda for the European water sector.
The Water Transition: More Than a Sector Story
Hans frames what’s happening in Europe in blunt terms:
- Longer, more frequent droughts
- Increasing heatwaves and higher average temperatures
- More intense, localised downpours and storms
Recent events make the point: from Storm Dara in the UK to devastating floods in Belgium and neighbouring regions, it’s clear that “moderate rainfall Europe” is a historical concept, not a current reality.
The consequences for water systems are stark:
- We need to store more water to bridge longer dry periods.
- We need peak capacity to meet hot-day demand spikes.
- We need systems that can both buffer and shed extreme rainfall.
The infrastructure built over the last 50–100 years was designed for a different climate. Hans’ view is unambiguous:
“We need to rebuild and rethink and redesign so that it is actually robust in all types of weather extremes.”
This isn’t about optimising a stable system. It’s about re-engineering the fundamentals.
Diversifying Sources: Beyond the “One Local Well” Model
Historically, De Watergroep — like many European operators — relied heavily on groundwater:
“Digging a hole, getting the water almost clear from the underground, and serving it through a pipeline network.”
That era is over.
The new model is about multiple, interconnected sources:
- Surface water
- Urban wastewater as a feedstock for drinking water production
- Industrial process water as a local source – for example, a project with a sugar refinery, reusing process water from beet processing as input for drinking water treatment
And crucially, it’s not enough to diversify; you must connect:
- The idea that one local source serves one local community is no longer viable.
- If that local source is hit by drought, the system fails.
- The future is a networked mesh of sources and regions, able to move water and resilience where it’s needed.
For B2B audiences – from industry to agriculture to real estate – this has direct implications: the old assumption of local, invisible, guaranteed supply is gone. Future-proofed businesses will need to understand and align with regional, multi-source water strategies.
Using Wastewater Twice: Water, Energy, and Materials
On the wastewater side, Hans sees an obvious but still underused opportunity: the link between water and energy.
Wastewater is:
- A potential source of drinking water (after advanced treatment)
- A source of energy – via biogas, heat recovery, and other processes
- A source of materials – nutrients that can be recovered and reused, closing loops back into agriculture
Coming from the fertiliser world, Hans treats wastewater less as a burden and more as a resource stream waiting for better engineering, investment and regulation.
For utilities and industrial partners alike, this is a pivot from linear disposal to circular economy asset.
Public Trust and the Politics of Reuse
Let’s be honest: telling people they might in future be drinking water that started life as wastewater is not a guaranteed vote-winner.
Hans doesn’t pretend otherwise:
“At first instance, people are not feeling very comfortable with the message that we’re looking into utilising wastewater for making drinking water.”
The route through that discomfort is trust and transparency:
- Clear, consistent communication about treatment processes
- Robust monitoring and analysis regimes
- Radical openness with data and performance
When people see that:
- A competent, trusted utility is in charge
- The process is technically rigorous and heavily monitored
- No one is quietly cutting corners to save money
…they adapt surprisingly quickly.
For B2B leaders, the signal is clear: if your brand or operations depend on water security, you have a direct interest in supporting utilities to build and maintain that trust, not undermining it in the pursuit of short-term gains.
Restoring Balance: Nature as a Buffer, Not an Afterthought
Hans’s final point is philosophical but very practical: the need to rebalance human activity and nature.
He points to a classic 20th-century move: straightening meandering rivers into canals to move water (and goods) quickly to the sea and reduce flood risk.
That worked for transport and short-term flood management. But in a climate of longer droughts and bigger storms, it has backfired:
- We’ve accelerated water off the landscape when we should sometimes be slowing and storing it.
- We’ve removed wetlands that act as natural sponges and buffers.
His prescription is not nostalgia, but strategic restoration:
- Re-creating wetlands where appropriate
- Using nature as part of the resilience toolkit, not as the décor around hard infrastructure
You can hear the engineer and the systems thinker in one line:
We can’t redo the past, but we can change the future if we act differently today.
What This Means for Water Leaders and Their Partners
Hans’s conversation with Piers lands on several uncomfortable but necessary truths for leaders across the water value chain:
- The climate that your assets were built for no longer exists.
- “Local source, local community” is a fragile design pattern, not a robust one.
- Wastewater is a multi-value resource, not just a disposal problem.
- Public acceptance of reuse is a communications and trust challenge, not a technical impossibility.
- Nature-based solutions are not a luxury; they are part of serious resilience planning.
If you are in utilities, industry, agriculture, or policy, the message is simple:
You are already in the water transition. The only question is whether you’re treating it as a side-project or a design principle.
To explore these themes in more depth and hear directly from Hans Goossens, listen to this episode of the Exec Exchange.