The Dutch water transition: from draining water to storing it

A country that spent centuries perfecting drainage now needs to do the opposite. On this episode of the Exec Exchange, Piers Clark spoke with Doeke Schippers, Leading Professional at Vitens, the largest drinking water company in the Netherlands, serving one third of the country and 6 million people. Schippers describes a system designed around one climate that is now operating in another, and the shift in infrastructure, sourcing and regulatory thinking that follows from that.

Feast and famine in a country built for surplus

The Netherlands has always had too much water, and total annual volumes are still rising. What has changed is the distribution. Floods arrive in autumn and winter; drought arrives in summer. This year brought a fourth heat wave, with temperatures reaching 40C, low flows in the Rhine and the Meuse, and salinity increasing in the IJssel Lake as its level drops. Twenty years ago, Schippers says, 40C in the Netherlands was not something he would have considered plausible.

The engineering consequence is significant. A national system optimized to move rainfall out beyond the dikes as quickly as possible now has to hold water back, store it, and keep it usable until the summer demand peak.

Water batteries and nature-based storage

Vitens is groundwater based and needs to change that. The approach it calls water batteries captures surface water when it is abundant, treats it, and puts it into the ground for recovery later. Two mechanisms run in parallel: managed aquifer recharge using pumping, and natural infiltration through lagoons and lakes in nature-based areas. At one location, 6 million cubic meters are infiltrated annually and the same volume recovered.

The available capacity is substantial. Schippers points to a single zone capable of storing ten times the volume of the IJssel Lake. The co-benefit matters too: holding winter water in the system supports agriculture and reduces the volume that has to be pushed out during high-flow periods.

Building a mixed source system

The longer-term design is a set of four or five sites Vitens calls strategic hearts, sited around the River IJssel, each blending groundwater, surface water, treated wastewater effluent and local rainfall. Part of that combined volume is treated to drinking water standard, and the remainder is infiltrated. The strategic point is diversification: a utility dependent on one source has no room to move when that source comes under pressure.

Water quality sets the pace

Diversification is limited by contamination, not by ambition. Incoming quality from alternative sources is poor, and Dutch rules prohibit infiltration of water containing PFAS above 4.4 nanograms per liter. Effluent reuse is under investigation, but requires treatment trains capable of removing PFAS and other micropollutants before water enters the ground. Storage capacity without treatment capability does not deliver a usable source.

Why desalination sits at the back of the queue

Desalination is possible on the North Sea coast, but not in the Waddenzee, a UNESCO World Heritage site where extraction is not permitted. Schippers’ objection is economic and environmental as much as regulatory: discharging fresh water to the sea in winter, then paying for energy-intensive treatment to recover equivalent volumes, is hard to defend when that water could be retained for supply, nature and recreation. Desalination remains a fallback if other options fail.

Bringing the regulator with you

The provincial regulator was initially cautious, as regulators tend to be with unfamiliar approaches. Vitens brought it into the process through a project called Living Lab, aiming to deliver a working strategic heart within five years. Alignment came from mutual dependence: economic growth and new housing in the province cannot proceed without secure drinking water supply.

The visibility problem

Vitens delivers drinking water without chlorine, a national position taken in the 1970s on the principle that additives should not be dosed into public supply. It is a technically demanding choice, requiring boil advisories in the event of an incident. Almost no customer knows it has been made.

Schippers contrasts this with Singapore, where taxi drivers can talk about PUB unprompted. In the Netherlands, water is a commodity that is simply always there, and the energy transition now occupies the political attention that water needs. That gap becomes a problem as bills rise, infrastructure changes and service disruptions become more likely.

Asked what he would tell his younger self, Schippers was blunt: invest more, earlier, in pipes and treatment, and bring drinking water and wastewater closer together. The whole water system is interdependent, and utilities that treat it as separable will find that assumption tested. More money on maintenance, and more courage in committing to it.