3.Present Status of Water Supply

The number of water supply utilities in Japan was brought down to some 14,580 and the majority of them is a small scale of water supply. To secure safe and idealistic water supply, amalgamation and merger of these small ones must be further promoted.

Fig.4 Annual Volume of Water Supplied by Scale of Water Supply
and Number of Public Water Supplies in FY 2001

As shown in Fig.4, the 97.3 per cent of water supplies have a population served of less than 50,000 and out of them, 90.0 per cent are serving a population less than 5,000. The majority of water supplies in Japan today are "small-scaled." For small-scale water supplies, the high operating cost and difficulty in securing experienced personnel are always inevitable. In order to solve these problems, small-scale water supplies must be reorganized and integrated, in short, "regionalized."