The St.Gallen region is making its drinking water supply fit for the coming decades. With the decision in favour of the new Riet II lake water plant in Goldach, the existing plant in Frasnacht is being given a second pillar of equal value. Today, the supply of the twelve participating municipalities in Eastern Switzerland depends largely on this one source of supply in the event of an emergency. A risk that no longer fulfils the federal requirements for severe shortages. Riet II is intended to close precisely this gap and ensure supplies even if a plant fails or Lake Constance can only be used to a limited extent at times.
The new plant will be realised on the site of the existing Riet high-pressure pumping station in Goldach. Around 60 million Swiss francs have been budgeted for construction and equipment. The costs will be borne by the twelve shareholder partners of RWSG Regionale Wasserversorgung St.Gallen AG in accordance with a new distribution model, which will be passed on to end customers via the water prices in future. The fact that all partner municipalities are unanimously in favour of the project and financing shows the high strategic importance: drinking water is treated as a critical infrastructure that must function just as robustly in the event of a crisis as it does in everyday life.
With Riet II, the RWSG is expanding its role as the backbone of the regional water infrastructure. It is responsible for collecting raw water, treating it and transporting it to the municipal networks and supplies more than 150,000 people with drinking, process and extinguishing water. In future, it will operate two lake water works, Frasnacht and Goldach, as well as the Riet high-pressure pumping station and the associated transport pipelines. This will benefit urban centres such as St.Gallen and Arbon as well as smaller partner communities from Abtwil-St.Josefen to Teufen. The new plant is therefore more than just a construction project: it is a long-term promise of security for an entire region.
