BALTIC SEAENVIRONMENT PROCEEDINGS No. 59 - Helcom

wastewater disposal plants are met by property owners.
This is done with the aid of statutory regulations adopted
by town councils and local authorities which decide how
and to what extent their residents are to bear the costs
of the construction of sewage treatment plants and the
expansion of wastewater treatment. Single payments and
fees per cubic metre of water used are the result.
In Germany, house owners usually pay up to 90% of the
costs for the construction of a sewage system once their
home has been connected to it and it is in use. The cost
of constructing and expanding sewage treatment plants is
met by charging householders per cubic metre of fresh
water. The party liable for payment is the property owner.
Charges for the construction and operation of a treatment
plant (depreciation, interest payments, maintenance) are,
like the running costs for the sewage system
(depreciation, interest payments, maintenance), a part of
the costs to be met regularly for a house or from the
rent. All the relevant questions must be settled before a
start is made on the sewage system construction and
wastewater improvement programmes which last many years.
Nevertheless, to improve sewage treatment plants as
quickly as possible, as called for by the Helsinki
Commision for the Baltic Sea and by other international
bodies for the North Sea after 1988, additional financial
incentives were needed to ensure that town councils and
local authorities took the necessary decisions quickly.
These incentives took the form of a programme of special
grants for the construction of nutrient-removal works; it
was put into force in various ways by all of the Federal
Republic's Lander governments. In Schleswig-Holstein,
grants of up to 50% were initially available; now they
amount to 20%. With the help of these grants, equipment
for the chemical precipitation of phosphates was installed
at all large treatment works within two years. The calls
for a 50% reduction in phosphate input were thus
translated into action very quickly.
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