When Ludwig Helm first heard that a villa in his town used 80,000 liters of water a day — 625 times the daily average consumption of a one-person household in Germany — he thought the meter must be defective.
It wasn’t.
The wealthy town of Königstein, which sits on the wooded slopes of the Taunus, a mountain range near Frankfurt in Germany, counts some 98 people with annual incomes above €1 million among its 16,700 residents. Those households are driving water consumption through the roof, flouting restrictions aimed at protecting drinking water supplies as the region grapples with drought.
Water for me …
