The concepts and principles associated with Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) have been around for many decades. The IWRM approach of merging water and wastewater utilities into a single organization has several advantages, particularly for larger urban areas. Not only can pipes for both services be laid in the same excavation, but human resources can also be conserved through cross‐training of water supply and wastewater services personnel. Although there are advantages, for a variety of reasons the concept has been slow to gain acceptance. Some of these reasons have to do with the approach to utility services in different countries; for example, in Germany wastewater services fall under the purview of the roads department. Utility services in Finland, and to a lesser extent Sweden, provide opportunities to study the implementation of IWRM on a wider scale. Certainly the mergers of water and wastewater utilities in these two countries have had their challenges. There has sometimes been little cooperation, and even a culture of rivalry between staff of the merged utilities. But more significant, there has been very little documentation about how the processes of separate utilities providing different services were actually merged. This article looks at what is known and what information is lacking about these types of mergers and suggests areas for additional study. The authors suggest that the lessons learned from the implementation of IWRM in Finland and Sweden have wider global applications as countries search for ways to incorporate greater efficiencies while working with increasingly limited resources.

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Several forms of supra-municipal cooperation between water and wastewater utilities have evolved in Finland since the 1950s: bilateral contract-based, municipal federations or authorities operating on a wholesale basis as well as supra-municipal companies. These may take care of community water supply or sewerage, or both. This paper explores and analyzes the most common form of cooperation: contracts for water and wastewater services between neighboring municipalities. The extent of contractual cooperation until 2006 was explored by an inquiry sent to bigger water and wastewater utilities (n = 233 replies; 88 %). Compared to a study performed in 1975, the number of bilateral contracts had tripled. The study also included interviews targeting nine selected cases. We examined also the centralization of wastewater treatment when small plants are closed down and wastewater is directed to larger plants. Centralization has led to the construction of transfer sewers; the paper also explores their evolution from 1995 to 2015. Contrary to common arguments, contractual cooperation proved rather easy to manage and should be seen as a serious option for other tighter forms of supra-municipal cooperation that are also increasing. OPEN ACCESS

Water services, that is, water supply and wastewater disposal, are traditionally the responsibility of local governments. Many municipalities have joined forces to meet the challenges of increasing water quality requirements, aging infrastructures, and decreasing fiscal resources. Regional cooperation is claimed to generate benefits in various ways, but there are challenges to this assumption. This article assesses the benefits and challenges of regional cooperation through the following categories: economies of scale, socioeconomic and spatial disparities, autonomy and legitimacy, by comparing Finnish experiences with previous research findings. Our assessment concludes that the benefits and challenges of regional cooperation are not straightforward, not only dependent on the local context but also on the level and tradition of cooperation, especially on the degree of organizational autonomy.

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