Water for everyone in Frankfurt
Mainovia AG opens two drinking water fountains in the station district
Water for mild days: The energy company Mainova opened two new drinking water fountains in the station district yesterday. “We chose today’s World Water Day to make water, as the number one foodstuff, accessible to everyone free of charge,” explains Constantin H. Alsheimer, CEO of Mainova. “We want to give something back to Frankfurt.”
The design of the fountain should fit into the cityscape. That was very important to the city, says Alsheimer. This page is successful. The two meter high drinking water fountain in the Kaiserstraße directly at the train station is as grey, stainless steel and functional as Frankfurt’s skyscrapers are. Whether that is desirable is another question. Utility and hygiene play a more important role here. At the push of a button, a jet of water flows out of the fountain and delivers half a liter of clean drinking water
“We decided against a permanent flow of water because we want to contradict the image of water as an infinite resource,” says Alsheimer. However, this does not have a negative impact on the quality of the water. “The system cleans itself every half hour and is also checked regularly.”
The fact that the jet of water flows at waist height may seem silly to the point of being unthought out, but there is a reason, as initiator Bernd Reisig explains. “We want everyone, big and small, to be able to use the fountains, which is why we decided on the design.” Reisig also campaigned for the location in the station district. “Of course, the fountains are there for everyone. But we are particularly concerned with the homeless and those in need of help, for whom access to clean drinking water is difficult.” The risk of dehydration is particularly high in the summer months and the wells could help.
The idea for additional wells at the new location had already been in the pipeline for two years. “It doesn’t really take long to build something like this. It’s not a technical masterpiece, but I had to annoy the city a lot before the project finally went through all the authorities,” remarked Reisig. He’s glad it finally worked out.
In addition to the fountain in Kaiserstraße, another one was opened on François-Mitterrand-Platz in the north of the station district. Mainova AG had already built two drinking fountains in the city center in 2016 and 2017, which are now returning from the winter break. These have already found favor in the past summer months. “The wells are used around 430 times a day,” emphasizes Alsheimer. In order to achieve its goal of providing fresh drinking water free of charge and on a large scale, Mainova wants to build a total of seven wells in Frankfurt.