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Welcome to The Executive Exchange, a premier podcast series for on-the-go senior executives. Each episode features short, impactful podcasts where industry leaders share key insights and experiences from the water industry.
[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange, 15-minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, inform, and educate other water sector leaders around the globe.
[00:00:10] Piers Clark: My name is Piers Clark, and my guest today is Doeke Schippers, the Leading Professional at Vitens in the Netherlands, and we're gonna be talking about the water transition and some of the challenges that the Dutch water utilities are facing.
[00:00:23] Piers Clark: Doeke, wonderful to have you with me today.
[00:00:25] Doeke Schippers: Glad to be here.
[00:00:26] Piers Clark: Well, we always start by learning a bit about our podcaster. So can you walk me through the journey you've taken from university to where you are now?
[00:00:35] Doeke Schippers: I started as a very young chemical engineer at a wastewater company in the Netherlands. I started as a contractor, and I travel around the globe troubleshooting on wastewater treatment systems.
[00:00:47] Doeke Schippers: And 28 years ago, approximately, in the drinking water sector, I started as a process engineer doing things with membrane filtration, ion exchange, backwash water and so forth.
[00:00:56] Doeke Schippers: And from then on I got to the management positions. First, I was manager at the innovation department, then in the investment department. Then, I was 12 years manager of the production department, and now it's Vitens itself.
[00:01:10] Piers Clark: At some stage you must have made the choice to go from wastewater to drinking water. When was that?
[00:01:15] Doeke Schippers: Well, when I started to think about the smell and now it's, it was- a very different story from that.
[00:01:21] Doeke Schippers: The possibilities I got from the company, the contracting firm, wasn't that good because they wanted to put me in sales instead of doing the things in the technical side and I didn't want it.
[00:01:30] Doeke Schippers: So that's where I decided to make the step from wastewater to drinking water.
[00:01:34] Piers Clark: That's a lovely shift to talking now about Vitens. So where is Vitens? How many people does it serve? Tell me a bit more about the company.
[00:01:41] Doeke Schippers: In the Netherlands, we have 10 drinking water companies and we're the largest one.
[00:01:45] Doeke Schippers: We're serving one third of the Netherlands. 6 million people get water from Vitens 24/7 very clean drinking water without chlorine.
[00:01:54] Doeke Schippers: We always say, without chlorine. It's just pure drinking water we make.
[00:01:58] Piers Clark: Let's just touch on the Netherlands' experience with chlorine and drinking water and why you're without chlorine.
[00:02:04] Doeke Schippers: For a groundwater company, it's quite easy because we have water which is quite old, so there's no bacteria, viruses in the water.
[00:02:11] Doeke Schippers: But in the mid-'70s, approximately 30 drinking water companies at that time, we had a discussion about putting stuff into the water for the health of people. But in the end we said, "No, we don't want to dose anything." It's up to the people. They are responsible for their own health, getting the right food, getting the right drinks.
[00:02:27] Doeke Schippers: And we ended up by saying, "Okay, we don't want to have anything into the water," so we don't put chlorine and all those additives into the water. It's much more difficult than when you are using chlorine because if we have a calamity, then we need to have boiling advice to all of our customers, and that's a little bit different from the chlorine drinking water companies.
[00:02:46] Piers Clark: We could have a whole podcast on that, but we're going to talk about the future challenges and what you called the "water transition". Set for me the framework.
[00:02:54] Piers Clark: What's the challenge that you're facing in the Netherlands?
[00:02:57] Doeke Schippers: It's a very interesting summer again at the end of July. We have the fourth heat wave of this summer, and that's quite challenging for us. Sometimes it's going up to 40 degrees in the Netherlands. 20 years ago I could not imagine that we could reach 40 degrees.
But what you also see, it's very dry. So all the water coming in from the Rhine, the Meuse, it's very low. Farmers are complaining, of course. There is no rainfall so we don't have a lot of water anymore. We have a large lake, the IJssel Lake, but it's also beginning to lose a little bit of height, so saline water coming in, so it's becoming more and more salty.
[00:03:31] Doeke Schippers: So what we see is that the climate change in the Netherlands is quite rapid. We used to be a country with a lot of water. If rain falls, we try to get it as fast as we can to the sea because one third of the country is below sea level. That means that we have to bring water outside of the dikes.
[00:03:48] Doeke Schippers: But the problem is now, we don't have enough water anymore, so instead of bringing it as fast as you can to the sea, we have to keep it inside in our system. So we have to buffer it. We have to bring it into our dunes. That's a little bit the story behind it.
[00:04:01] Piers Clark: And that's a whole change in the infrastructure that you've got on the ground because now, you've got to try and find ways of holding it and keeping it wholesome until you need it, which is a totally different challenge.
[00:04:12] Doeke Schippers: This is a very total different challenge because if you look at the Netherlands, farming is very large. We have a lot of cows in the Netherlands. We have a lot of potatoes and so on and we need a lot of water, but it was never a problem.
[00:04:23] Doeke Schippers: We always had too much water, and still we have too much water. If you look at the number of water coming in every year, it's becoming more and more. So, we have floods during the autumn and the winter period and drought during the summer period.
[00:04:37] Doeke Schippers: It's quite insane because we didn't know it could happen also here in the Netherlands.
[00:04:41] Piers Clark: There are a lot of people listening to this who recognize exactly that problem you're describing. More intense rainfall, more intense drought periods. We go from feast to famine as the year goes through with regards our water resources.
How is Vitens addressing this challenge? What are the things that are in your strategy to help address this problem?
[00:05:00] Doeke Schippers: We are groundwater- based, but we need to step up to other kind of sources.
[00:05:04] Doeke Schippers: So, if you look at surface water, we have a lot of surface water during some periods. We need to extract that water, keep it inside our system, clean it, and bring it into the soil.
[00:05:14] Doeke Schippers: So we want to, more or less, make buffers, and we call it "water batteries". You charge them in the winter and autumn, and you use it in summertime. That's a little bit the idea. So, it also helps us to prevent dry feet during the winter period because there's too much water coming in.
So if we can keep that water into the system for farming and for drinking water in summer period, that's one of the things. So, we have the dunes, of course on the western side of the Netherlands, but also within our area, there are a lot of unsaturated zones where we can bring a lot of water in.
[00:05:42] Doeke Schippers: We have one zone where we can store 10 times as much as the whole IJssel Lake, so that's quite interesting.
[00:05:48] Piers Clark: And so let me get this clear. This is groundwater recharging but not pumping it down. It's putting it on the surface and letting it seep down into the aquifers. Is that correct?
[00:05:57] Doeke Schippers: So we have two systems. One is the aquifer recharge, we are doing it with pumping. And then our nature-based solutions, we put in the lagoons, lakes and so on like that with natural infiltration.
We have now one location where we put in 6 million cubes a year of water into a very nice nature-based area, and then we extract also 6 million cubes.
[00:06:19] Piers Clark: How confident are you that what you're doing will be sufficient to solve the problem?
[00:06:24] Doeke Schippers: Well, we're very confident that this should be the solution because if you look at the way the water system is changing, you need to look at other solutions right now.
[00:06:32] Doeke Schippers: We are also investigating the reuse of effluent of wastewater treatment systems. But we like to have the four step, that would be more expensive.
[00:06:42] Doeke Schippers: The water quality we're getting in, it's quite poor. So, if you look at PFAS for instance we need to get rid of the PFAS before we infiltrate it into the soil. It's not allowed to infiltrate water containing PFAS if it's above 4.4 nanograms per liter. We need to have treatment systems which are capable of removing PFAS, and all the kind of stuff we put in the water systems.
So what we want to do, have a mix of different sources: groundwater, surface water, treated wastewater, local rainfall, so on, bring it back together and put it into one system. That's a little bit the idea.
[00:07:14] Piers Clark: And obviously Netherlands has a number of rivers flowing through it that have come through a lot of other European countries. You're at the tail end before it discharges into the North Sea.
[00:07:24] Piers Clark: Vitens, you don't take anything from the rivers, do you?
[00:07:28] Doeke Schippers: At this time we don't, no.
[00:07:29] Doeke Schippers: We are jumping to the river because we have the River IJssel in our area. So that's where we are trying to build four or five "strategic hearts" we call them, where we mix all these kind of sources. And we treat water to drinking water, but also the rest of the water, we want to infiltrate.
[00:07:45] Piers Clark: Now, you've not mentioned desalination at all. Is that deliberate?
[00:07:49] Doeke Schippers: For our area, it's quite difficult because we have a very nice sea. We call it the Waddenzee and it's not allowed to extract water from there. It's UNESCO heritage site so it's not allowed to do something there.
[00:08:00] Doeke Schippers: It's very nice site because I live next to it. It's very nice, so we want to keep it that way. So, we won't interfere with that system.
[00:08:08] Doeke Schippers: But if you look at desalination, of course, it can be done at the side of the North Sea, but I think it's quite insane that you have very nice sweet water coming from the eastern side and during the wintertime, let it discharge into the sea, and try to do it with very expensive treatment system, bring it back into your system.
Why not keep this fresh water inside , not only for drinking water but also for recreation, for the nature? I think that's more important. So keep the water inside, but in the end if everything fails, desal is always an option for us.
[00:08:38] Piers Clark: That's absolutely fascinating.
[00:08:39] Piers Clark: Now tell me, what's the regulator's role in finding these different solutions, and how do they view them? Because regulators are sometimes a bit nervous about innovative approaches, and you're talking about a transition, a change, so have they come on the journey with you?
[00:08:53] Doeke Schippers: At first they were a little bit scared because everything new is very difficult for them. But we took them with us in a journey. We have a project called Living Lab , where we try to put in, within five years, this kind of approach, a strategic heart.
[00:09:06] Doeke Schippers: We had a procurement, and they were on our side because the regulator in the Netherlands is the province. It's also important for the province to have new buildings built, economical growth, so if there's no drinking water, all the pillars will fall down. They are very dependent on our role as drinking water company for providing drinking water.
[00:09:25] Piers Clark: And what about the public? How aware are they of what Vitens is doing, or is it, I turn my taps on, I get water, I flush my toilet, and then wastewater disapppears. I don't think about it any more than that?
[00:09:37] Doeke Schippers: In that part, I'm sometimes a little bit jealous on the PUB in Singapore, because when I jump into a taxi, and I tell what I'm going to do, "I'm going to visit the PUB," they always directly start, "Oh, PUB is that, and that."
[00:09:49] Doeke Schippers: If you come to the Netherlands, and you say, "Where do you get your drinking water from," most of the people don't know, because we're so used to having good water from the drinking water tap. It's a commodity. People don't think about it. It's always there. If there's calamity, it's always there because we always fix it.
They have water from the tap, and that's it. So the whole story of drinking water is a story of 30, 40 years ago. But nowadays, it's commodity, and people think that internet and the Wi-Fi is more important than drinking water.
[00:10:16] Doeke Schippers: So that's difficult.
[00:10:17] Piers Clark: It is an absolutely fascinating debate because water is a bit like wallpaper. If it looks good, nobody notices it. If it's terrible, everybody notices it, and everybody's got an opinion about it.
[00:10:28] Piers Clark: With the climate crisis and some of the things that have got to happen, bills have got to increase, infrastructure's got to change, there will be disruptions, there'll be hose pipe bans, there'll be all sorts of things. And the public need a greater level of awareness about what we're doing in water than they currently have.
[00:10:43] Doeke Schippers: That's correct. And sometimes we imagine that there would be a very large calamity, and the whole city of Amsterdam doesn't have water for one week. Then water is coming on the top one level.
[00:10:52] Doeke Schippers: If you look at energy right now, there's a lot of problems with the energy transition. We don't have enough energy to be distributed, so now it's on top level one. But still, drinking water is still a little bit below the table.
[00:11:02] Piers Clark: I couldn't agree with you more. In 2012, I was the Olympics director for Thames Water which meant I was responsible for making sure that water got delivered to all of the Olympic venues, and we were heading towards a drought.
[00:11:15] Piers Clark: And through the grace of God, we got away with it. It started raining about six weeks before the Olympics began, and I was thinking, "Oh, that's such a relief." But with hindsight, I wish it hadn't rained. I wish there had been that disastrous moment because it would've raised the national psyche around, "Oh my God, this is a nation that is right on the cusp of its water resources."
[00:11:34] Piers Clark: Doeke, it's been wonderful chatting with you. We like to finish with a bit of a personal question. I'd like to ask you to go back 30, 40 years to when you were that young engineer, when you were doing wastewater, what advice would you give young Doeke Schippers?
[00:11:50] Doeke Schippers: If I look back, we had to invest more 40 years ago. We had to invest more in piping, in treatment systems, in wastewater, and bringing it together. So I'm sometimes a little bit jealous on other companies abroad where they bring in the wastewater and drinking water, because the water system is not dependent on one aspect.
[00:12:08] Doeke Schippers: We were a little bit in a merge of one wastewater company and a drinking water company, and it failed. The story of Waternet in the Netherlands, where they were combined, and now they are back into a drinking water and wastewater company again.
Maybe we had to put in more effort at that time to bring it to a final stage and do it. We are so dependent from each other in this whole water system. So more money on maintenance, and be a little bit brave. Do it.
[00:12:32] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me, Piers Clark. And my guest today has been Doeke Schippers, the Leading Professional at Vitens, the largest water supply company in the Netherlands. And we've been talking about the water transition challenges that the Netherlands is facing.
[00:12:48] Piers Clark: Thank you to our sponsors, and until next time, keep asking questions, keep sharing, and keep safe.