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Decision making process
Name of the case study
Developing new methods for co-operation on groundwater protection: Water co-operation and project "Clean Water".
Decision making process - stages
The water co-operation connects the different actors involved in water use and ground water protection.
It draws in Copenhagen Energy into the local work on ground water protection together with the municipality and the other water works. In this way resources for groundwater protection are allocated and coordination between a row of different actors are established. Hence the process of groundwater protection is much more focused and extensive.
The partners recognise also the different perspectives and resources of the different actors – that should be taken into consideration for the water co-operation to work well. The local water works points to the role of Copenhagen Energy as a resource to secure ground water protection in the catchments areas and as a knowledge resource as their organisation is much larger. The decisions in the water co-operations of Slangerup are based on consensus – all the partners must agree. In a longer time perspective the water co-operations could be forerunners for more wide-ranging collaborations. Thus the municipality points to the collaboration on management of the water works and even amalgamations of the water works – now that they know each other it does not seems that intolerable.
Decision making process - levels
Decision making occurs at the technical and political levels
Decision making process - sources of information
Meetings and agreement are the decision making methods
Decision making process - who are the decision makers
The main actors are the Copenhagen Energy (the Water-section), the local water works, the municipality and other stakeholders in sustainable groundwater protection such as the Agenda 21 Center.
Decision making process - who made the final decision for project implementation
All actors had to agree to participate in the final decision making
Name of tool
Water co-operation
Decision making process - tools in decision-making process
The cooperation is a framework, that includes all stages.
The tool has generated new decision-making processes that was not present before. Some of the decisions that Copenhagen Energy would normally take on their own is not laid out in the water cooperation, where each participant has one vote, which ensures that Copenhagen Energy can not steamroll the decisions. Although CE and the local water suppliers often have the same interests, they can also look quite differently at a case. For instance, for the local waterworks it might be much more important to establish a database for control-measures before they even start to talk about groundwater protection.
The water collaboration does not directly include indicators or measurable goals. Existing regulation in the water sector (for instance the "National Program for Surveillance of the Aquatic Environment", NOVA, running from 1998-2003), however, includes monitoring of the aquatic environment, including the groundwater level, and the pollution of it, due to national and international regulation. Within the different projects in the water collaborations, a number of quantitative indicators such as the number of unused wells and drillings to be closed are used.
Decision making process - how was the information for the dmp disseminated
Decision making process - how was the public involved
The water co-operation has produced a pamphlet, directed towards owners of private wells, to avoid pollution, or get the wells closed. It is very unusual for the water suppliers to have this outreaching role in relation to their customers, which takes some time to get used to.
Decision making process - was there public discussion over the project
What tools were used to assess sustainability?
Water co-operation
More information