Providing clean drinking water and wastewater treatment to the island of Bornholm

Bornholms Forsyning is the municipal utility supplying water to about one-third of the island’s inhabitants and to many businesses and institutions, and the utility manages the entire island’s sewer system and wastewater treatment.

As in the rest of Denmark, the people of Bornholm can drink the water straight from the tap. The groundwater goes through a simple aeration process before being piped out to the consumers – it is not necessary to add any chemicals to the water.

Wastewater is purified at several purification plants on the island. The purified water is completely clean and can be discharged into the natural environment with no detrimental impact. The purification process does not pollute, and the sludge left from the process is recycled as fertiliser on the island’s fields.

The processes of supplying water and managing wastewater require large amounts of energy, and Bornholms Forsyning has set the goal of reducing their power consumption by 25% by not later than 2015.

Visitors are introduced to Bornholm’s water-supply, sewer system and waste water purification system and to the efforts to improve the systems in relation to the environment and to deal with larger volumes of rainwater and to reduce the power consumption. Visit purification plant, pumping station, waterworks as desired.

Technical details

Water supply: Bornholms Forsyning supplies approximately 1/3 of Bornholm with clean drinking water:

• 8 waterworks
• 50 drillings
• 500 km water supply pipes

Sewer system: Bornholms Forsyning manages Bornholms sewer system and all waste water:

• 12 purification plants
• 200 pumping stations
• 500 km sewer pipes