This City Has the Most Expensive Water in the World

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 15, 8:30AM EST

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This City Has the Most Expensive Water in the World — © 5PH / Getty Images

Water has become a precious commodity worldwide. In the United States, for example, many of the western states have been plagued by drought. For the first time ever, the federal government declared a water shortage on the Colorado River, the BBC reports. Forty million people rely on the river for water. Huge bodies of water in the west, like Lake Mead, are shrinking rapidly. Arizona has issued a water shortage declaration for the first time. There is a chance that this is permanent.
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The World Wildlife Federation reports that the water scarcity problem is just as bad worldwide. It claims that 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water. Another 2.7 billion face a similar problem at least one month out of the year, and matters will get worse. Recently, the WWF forecast that “By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages. And ecosystems around the world will suffer even more.”

Despite these issues, millions of people continue to drink bottled water. In some cases, this water travels thousands of miles to market. Fiji Water is delivered to 60 countries. The distance from Fiji to New York City is almost 8,000 miles.
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Holidu’s recent The Water Price Index report looked at the price of tap water and bottled water in 30 U.S. cities and another 100 around the world. It used this to calculate the average price of water in each of these locations. Because of water shortages, it looked at the level of water stress in each city, which includes water shortages and restrictions. The balance of the methodology included what a tourist would pay for a bottle of water in a supermarket and the average price of a bottle of water from three companies: Evian, Perrier/Nestlé and the local Coca-Cola brand.

The city with the highest average price of water was Oslo, Norway, at $6.69. The next cities were San Francisco and Stuttgart. These are the 20 cities with the highest price of water:

Oslo ($6.69)
San Francisco ($6.07)
Stuttgart ($5.67)
San Diego ($5.38)
Copenhagen ($5.30)
Brisbane ($5.21)
Indianapolis ($5.17)
Rotterdam ($4.84)
Seattle ($4.60)
Toronto ($4.59)
Portland ($4.55)
Amsterdam ($4.43)
Melbourne ($4.41)
Stockholm ($4.37)
Lyon ($4.33)
Adelaide ($4.32)
Brussels ($4.24)
Hamburg ($4.24)
Munich ($4.19)
Frankfurt ($4.04)

Click here to read about the best place to enjoy the water in each state.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.