Dunes, Geopolitics, and Water Resilience with Wim Drossaert, CEO of Dunea at The Netherlands

[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 from around the globe.
[00:00:10] Piers Clark: My name is Piers Clark and my guest today is Wim Drossaert, the Chief Executive of Dunea in the Netherlands.
[00:00:19] Piers Clark: And we're gonna be talking about water resilience, about water quality, and about some of the geopolitical challenges that the water sector faces, both in Europe and around the world today.
[00:00:30] Piers Clark: Wim, brilliant to have you with us.
[00:00:32] Wim Drossaert: Looking forward for this conversation, Piers.
[00:00:34] Piers Clark: Now, we always start by trying to learn a little bit about our speaker. So take me back. What did you study at university? When did you start in the water sector? How long have you been in the role that you are in?
[00:00:45] Wim Drossaert: I studied about a couple of tracks actually. I did some chemistry. I did environmental science, and I ended up studying biology. I'm marine biologist, so I love to dive, I love to do the research. I did all kind of surveys between Indonesia and Australia close to the Great Barrier Reef. Good time to be honest but I came back to the Netherlands and I started to work for consultancies. So I worked in small Dutch consultancies in the water and environmental business.
[00:01:14] Wim Drossaert: And then in 2007-8, the small company in the Netherlands was been acquired by a global firm, Montgomery Watson Harza, MWH, which is now known as Stantec.
[00:01:25] Wim Drossaert: So, I came in and after a year running the business in North Europe, I moved to the UK. I've been the managing director for MWH in the UK, and then I ended up in Denver in the global board. Great experience doing a lot of business in the water business and across the globe, but mainly in Europe and Africa.
[00:01:44] Piers Clark: And so when did you leave MWH and join Dunea?
[00:01:48] Wim Drossaert: I left MWH in o'15 and I entered Dunea at the same moment. So it was an interesting change. To be honest, to become at the client site, I should have done it the opposite way, I guess.
[00:02:02] Piers Clark: Yeah, that's what most people do, but it means that you've brought a lot of that international experience that you get when you're a consultant of seeing how different water utilities work and bringing it into, not a small utility, but one that is confined within the boundaries of the geography that it serves.
[00:02:18] Piers Clark: So let's talk about Dunea. Where are you? What sort of activities do you do?
[00:02:23] Wim Drossaert: We are already on 1.4 million. We are between the Hague and Amsterdam and Rotterdam. So it's probably the most dense area of the Netherlands and also the area where we have less fresh water because that part of the Netherlands is below sea level. So all our groundwater is brackish or salt, so we cannot use it that easily for making drinking water.
[00:02:45] Wim Drossaert: The people make drinking water from the rivers - the Moose or Rhine. And that makes it always pretty complex for us because I heard the rivers are crossing five, six countries in Europe. So we also get the pollution from across Europe and we have as end of the pipe utility, we need to clean everything. A big challenge.
[00:03:07] Piers Clark: Brilliant. Now, I heard that the name Dunea means drinking water and conservation. Is that right?
[00:03:13] Wim Drossaert: Yeah, that's true. It's dunes and water because we used the dunes as our natural way of cleaning the water. In the old days, 150 years ago, the dunes was being used as the filtration.
[00:03:26] Wim Drossaert: Now, it's not enough. We need to do pre-treatments and we need to do post treatments after. But we use the dunes mainly as storage. And because this is our storage, we need to protect it and we do it by having the best beautiful nature on top of it.
[00:03:42] Piers Clark: Not biased at all. No. Not biased in any level.
[00:03:45] Wim Drossaert: No, absolutely not. That's really, really great and people like it; the combination of water and nature.
[00:03:50] Piers Clark: Okay, the topic we're gonna talk about today is this issue of water quality, water scarcity and infrastructure resilience, all in the context of geopolitics.
[00:04:00] Piers Clark: But you've sort of wetted my appetite by talking about the dunes of storage. So let me get this clear, are you taking the water, treating it and then doing more groundwater recharge?
[00:04:10] Wim Drossaert: No. So what we do is we use the River Moose and the River Rhine as our sources. So we transport it across probably a hundred kilometers to the dunes. We pretreated before it's got into the dunes because we don't want to pollute the dunes, of course. And then it stays for one month, six weeks in the dunes, and then we retract it and then we do the post treatment because we need to clean it further.
[00:04:34] Wim Drossaert: The biggest constraint we have is that the population is growing fast, that we need to make more drinking water than we can store it in the dunes. So that's why we change our strategy and we also are adding a new chain of making drinking water by using the UF -RO treatment.
[00:04:53] Wim Drossaert: In numbers, I think roughly 90 million cube of drinking water is made by the dunes and 10 million and maybe even more by UF -RO treatment.
[00:05:04] Piers Clark: Well that's brilliant. We got into a little bit of detail there. Now, let's come back out 'cause you mentioned you've got saline intrusion. So, walk me through the typical challenges that you are facing on a day-to-day basis of the water quality and how you are then addressing those.
[00:05:18] Wim Drossaert: As I mentioned, we use the river as a source. The Moose is crossing France, Belgium and in the end, of course, Netherlands. But the rivers are also being used as a discharge for industries, for wastewater, for agriculture. So, if that is not treated, we end up with a high concentration of pollutions.
[00:05:39] Wim Drossaert: What makes it even more difficult is that the permitting and the enforcement of people who are polluting the rivers is really, really not that top of the mind of most governments because there's always a challenge between economics and water quality and health.
[00:05:55] Wim Drossaert: And to be honest, we face the problems whether they discharge in Belgium or France or even in the Netherlands itself. And because I'm a local utility or regional utility, it's difficult to convince the people in France,
[00:06:09] Piers Clark: They have a responsibility because it's flowing down.
[00:06:11] Wim Drossaert: Yeah. I always make a joke that I need to open embassies across the river just to tell the story because that most people don't understand we drink from the rivers. In total, 7 million people are drinking from the River Moose.
[00:06:23] Wim Drossaert: So the challenge is how to convince the politics and the people that we need to protect the rivers. And at the same time, because of the climate change, we see I think three, four months a year that the discharge is low. That it's really getting a problem because if the discharge is low in the rivers and the pollution is the same, the concentration of pollution is extremely high.
[00:06:45] Wim Drossaert: So to be honest, we are less certain about the use of the rivers. So we are looking for new sources of making drinking water, and that's what we are doing of investigating, should we use the brackish water? Should we use the sea water or water from wastewater treatment plants?
[00:07:04] Piers Clark: It's exactly the thing you need to do 'cause your responsibility to make sure the taps keep flowing for the population that's there. But it does seem slightly bonkers that we move to doing desalination plants rather than trying to address the water quality issues of what's flowing in it. Humankind ought to be clever enough to resolve some of those problems so that you don't have to go to desalination.
[00:07:26] Wim Drossaert: You're absolutely right. I think it's sometimes unbelievable what we are doing. Even in the Netherlands itself, there was a province who was going to give a permit for a company to discharge PFAS for five kilograms into the Moose. And the legislation is just saying yes to that company.
[00:07:44] Wim Drossaert: You need to treat it, but only at an economic responsible way. So, if it's costing too much money, you don't need to do it. That makes no sense! It's funny. Yeah. But it's not, to be honest, it's not funny.
[00:07:55] Piers Clark: It's horrific. I hate to go there, but it feels like you need a regulatory body that sits over the whole water catchment area, irrespective of the national boundaries and that they have teeth and have the ability to enforce proper engagement with the natural environment. There is no other solution.
[00:08:13] Wim Drossaert: I agree. To be honest, we always thought that maybe Brussels could help with the EU regulation, but, well, we see how it works with EU water framework. It's not really working that makes it difficult for us.
[00:08:25] Wim Drossaert: So, as a company that needs to provide a safe and reliable drinking water, we cannot wait for doing this. So, we need to do more treatments, which is going to cost more. And of course, in the end, our customers are paying for this.
[00:08:40] Piers Clark: And sorry, just to keep harking on, on the point, not only will it cost more, but it will also cause more environmental damage.
[00:08:47] Piers Clark: Clean drinking water, using it for human consumption, cleaning it up and discharging it back into the river is a much more sensible and holistic way of doing it than taking saline water, desalinating it, creating a brine. Not only has a cost that's financially , it has a cost that is environmental.
[00:09:04] Wim Drossaert: Yeah. We did once calculated and we came to the conclusion that we just use 1.6% of the fresh water available in the Netherlands for making drinking water so it's roughly 99% we just flush to the sea. And we cannot retain the water because we are below sea level. And that's something which makes it pretty complex.
[00:09:26] Wim Drossaert: You need to build something below sea level where there's no fresh water available, but the highest economic growth and population growth is in this area. For example, there was a plan of building 250,000 houses in this area, and I'm already at a stretch at this moment of making drinking water. So, interesting times.
[00:09:46] Piers Clark: And when they talk about building houses, so in the UK one of the challenges we have is that there isn't a legal obligation for house builders to engage with the local water companies to see whether the infrastructure is appropriate, both to supply water and take the sewage that might come from a new housing development.
[00:10:03] Piers Clark: What happens in the Netherlands? Are you one of the statutory consultees?
[00:10:08] Wim Drossaert: To be honest, that's one of the issues. We are not even really involved in the plans of this, because we always are a little bit at the side level, I would say. Everyone takes drinking water for granted. We did gave a warning that from 2030, we are not sure that we can connect households and also the industries if we are not going to find solutions.
[00:10:27] Wim Drossaert: And so there's getting a bit more attention at this moment in the Dutch politics, but still, you know, if they need to make decisions, they find it difficult because water need to compete with economics. Water need to compete with agriculture.
[00:10:40] Wim Drossaert: And off top of that we also have resilience problems because we do see from a little bit more geopolitics that we also need to focus on making sure that operation can continue whatever happens. So we are prepared for drought, maybe even some small disruptions or maybe even a pollution. But in the end, if you're talking about gales or you know that we have not enough equipment or whatever. That's something that makes me a bit nervous at this moment.
[00:11:08] Piers Clark: I have huge empathy. Well, we did a podcast after the power cuts that swept across Spain and Portugal last summer, and we did a podcast with Nuno Brôco at Águas do Porto. That was a great story of what they learned from a catastrophic event.
[00:11:23] Piers Clark: But you are right, it's droughts, it's cyber attacks, it's power cuts, it's typhoons and trying to keep critical infrastructure going when that critical infrastructure is under enormous stress of overuse. It's an absolute nightmare challenge.
[00:11:38] Wim Drossaert: Well, it's something that gets a lot of attention at this moment and we had to host the national top where all the leaders across the world came.
[00:11:46] Wim Drossaert: So we did some practicing on what could go wrong. And then you can see that, to be honest, the water utilities are pretty good in shape compared to others. We can continue without having energy for two weeks at least because we have our own supply. We have a good preparation about cyber attacks. And so we are really, really I think good.
[00:12:08] Wim Drossaert: But what I learned and I met somebody from the Ukraine and he mentioned Dutch people are always organized about cost efficiency and it needs to be focused on low cost and optimization and centralization also. But we have learned there in a fight and even in a war, it was chaos and the unpredictable is future than you even can't imagine. The thing that he mentioned to me was that if something happens like this, you are at your own. You don't get that much help because everyone is in the problem.
[00:12:41] Wim Drossaert: And I had to think about it because if you look at the Corona time, we all learned that dependency of global suppliers even is at that time really a problem, an issue. So you need to be a little bit more self sufficient.
[00:12:54] Wim Drossaert: So that's a lesson learned for myself. I'm not sure exactly how to respond to it but we are working on it.
[00:13:00] Piers Clark: Understanding and being able to frame the problem is the first step of being able to then think wisely about what the potential solutions would be. To paraphrase that, we've spent decades driving down to the lowest operational cost, the lowest capital cost. And actually that's not the right answer for both the environment. And indeed in a world where we are facing some pretty volatile geopolitics, it's not the right key priority for that either.
[00:13:25] Piers Clark: Now, we are running out of time, so I want to take you back actually all the way to the start of your career when you were working out, do I go into water? Do I not go into water? And what advice would you give your younger self?
[00:13:37] Wim Drossaert: Yeah. Looking back I think it was absolutely great choice to step into a water business. And the funny part is that maybe it doesn't look that sexy but if you are getting in, you can see how unbelievably great the business is.
[00:13:51] Wim Drossaert: So I would definitely advise people to go in. I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it being in different cultures, learning from different client sites. But I definitely like what I'm doing now because now, if you are a consultant, you run projects, but you can also run away from projects. In a utility, you cannot run away from the projects. You need to face whatever you have decided to do.
[00:14:14] Wim Drossaert: And also in the complex geopolitical way, and local politics by the way too. Not everyone understands it. We know it, but how do we tell it?
[00:14:24] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me, Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Wim Drossaert, the Chief Executive at Dunea in the Netherlands. And we've been talking about water quality, water security, water scarcity, and all of that in the complex environment of volatile geopolitics of 2026.
[00:14:45] Piers Clark: Hope you can join us next time. Thank you.