Romanian Policy and Strategies in the Water and Wastewater Sector

Septembrie 2008

AUGUSTIN BOER - Analyst BDO CONTI AUDIT

 

Background of the Romanian Water Sector

In the last 3 years the general approach regarding the water sector in Romania recorded important changes. In order to assure a sustainable development of the water sector and the compliance with the EU Directive according to the agreed conformation period for the entire territory of Romania, the Romanian authorities decided to adopt a consolidation approach for the operation of the water and wastewater systems as part of a regionalization strategy.

After a period of more than four decades of centralised management, Romania decided to return to the local autonomy principle through decentralisation, in this way transferring major and concrete responsibilities to the local public administration, principle reflected in the National Constitution. One of these specific responsibilities mentioned in Law of the local public administration, No. 215/2001 republished, refers to the obligation of local administrations to organise their operation efficiently and adequately in order to provide public services. According to this Law, local public administrations have the right to associate with the aim to develop efficient public services of common/regional¹ interest.

Nevertheless, efficient public services can only be in place if supported by adequate investment programmes. However, only 32 major municipalities (of more than 100,000 inhabitants each) have benefited from capital investment programmes for rehabilitation of their water and wastewater infrastructure between 1990 and 2006.

Nevertheless, only a small minority of the 276 towns in Romania (at the end of 2003) have benefited from these programmes. Around 230 considered small and medium-sized towns, have not been able to attract financing from either international financial institutions or private operators. Due to lack of funds, these towns have made very little investments over the past 15 years to maintain and develop their water and wastewater infrastructure.

In Romania, only 52% of the population is connected both to water and sewage services and more than 71% of the wastewater is untreated or insufficiently treated. Until recently water and wastewater services were mostly operated by (often small) municipal utilities resulting in inefficient operations carried out at a sub-optimal scale, without access to financial means and limited technical and managerial capability to further develop the level of services.

Now that Romania has become a member country of the EU, it must comply with the European Directive 98/83/EC on drinking water quality by 2015 and the Directive 91/271/EC on urban wastewater treatment by the end of 2018. For this reason, Romania intends for the period 2010-2015 to make the necessary investments to comply with the European drinking water indicators for e.g. turbidity, ammonia, aluminum, pesticides, nitrates etc. and for urban wastewater collection, treatment and discharge. Also by 2015 waste water collection and treatment is planned to be realized for a number of 263 agglomerations of more than 10,000 population equivalent (p.e.) and by 2018 in 2,346 agglomerations of between 2,000 and 10,000 p.e.

In this view, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MESD) has requested financial assistance from pre-accession programmes (PHARE, ISPA) to support local authorities in creating strong and viable regional operators in the water sector, to ensure an adequate implementation of internationally financed projects and efficient operation of the utilities constructed with European funds.

 

General provisions of the water and wastewater services

Law 51/2006 defines the Local Public Services as the assembly of activities of general public utility and interest, performed at commune, town, municipality or county level under the lead, coordination and responsibility of the local public administration authorities, in order to satisfy the needs of local communities, among which the water and wastewater service.

The Water Supply and Wastewater Public Service is defined by Law 241/2006 as the assembly of activities of public utility and general economic and social interest, performed for the purpose of catchment, treatment, transport, storage and distribution of drinking or industrial water to all users within a locality’s territory, respectively for the collection, transport, treatment, and discharge of the wastewater, rain water and surface water within the urban area of the locality.

The public service of water supply has as its main components:

• the water catchment activity, from surface or ground sources,
• the treatment of raw water,
• the transport of drinking and/or industrial water,
• the storage of water,
• the distribution of drinking and/or industrial water.

The public service of wastewater has as its main components:

• the collection, transport and discharge of wastewater from the users to the treatment plants,
• the treatment of wastewater and discharge of treated wastewater to the emissary;
• the collection, discharge and appropriate treatment of the waste from the rainwater drains and the insurance of their functionality;
• the discharge, treatment, and storage of sludge and other similar waste materials resulting from the above mentioned activities,
• the discharge of rain and surface water from the urban areas of the municipalities.

The water supply and wastewater public services, as local public services, are operated through a combination of buildings and lands, technological installations, functional equipment and specific facilities that form an integral part of the urban infrastructure of the localities, collectively called the public water supply and wastewater systems.

According to Law no. 213/1998, the infrastructure related to the water and wastewater services (water supply and wastewater networks, treatment and ancillary plants, with the corresponding installations, buildings and land) belongs to the public domain. Both the existing infrastructure as at the date of the signing of the Delegation Contract and the assets afferent to the infrastructure, which result from the investments carried out during the performance of the Delegation Contract, are public assets belonging to the public ownership of the administrative-territorial units.

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