Promise kept on the water. Arera, the Energy, Waste and Water Authority, closes the year with an important provision. He indeed approved it regulatory scheme to reduce the gap (between North and South but also patchy) in the water services offered to Italian consumers. Now even the municipal management companies and wholly in public hands will have to gradually ensure adequate services for their customers.
In fact, the Authority's resolution aims to gradually bring operators who are lagging behind towards national standards and thus overcome the existing gap in the water sector. All this through theefficiency of operating and management costs, the enhancement of environmental sustainability also through the Plan for Strategic Works and incentives to tools measure of consumption, to increase citizens' awareness of their habits”. These criteria, listed in the press release released by Arera, are the principles that inspire it the new Water Tariff Method, approved by the Energy and Environment Authority for the period 2020-2023, which also places the sector fully within theThe circular economy, also rewarding theenergy efficiency and providing incentives for the saving and reusing water.
Il Water Tariff Method (MTI-3), as the new provision is called, however maintains stability and certainty in the guiding criteria and moves in line with the rules introduced starting from 2012.
It applies to anyone who, for whatever reason, manages the water service on the national territory (whether it is companies or economic management of local authorities). The autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano are excluded and details are foreseen methodology guidelines for Regions with special statutes that have already legislated on the matter.
The tariff method, underlines the Arera, is uniform but also asymmetrical, that is, it takes into account the different local situations and the programmatic choices defined by the local government bodies (EGA).
In particular, warns the Arera, checks will increase so that “any tariff increases will only be possible following investments actually made or improvements in certificate management“. Indeed, the presence of a is confirmed cap on increases, for the first time differentiated not only on the operating costs of management, but also on the basis of revenues per inhabitant served.
Environmental sustainability is promoted through a number of incentives ranging from the containment of electricity consumption to supply water, to the reduction of the use of plastic in the consumption of drinking water, to the recovery of energy and materials (the reference is to the treatment of purification sludge), to the reuse of purified water for agricultural and industrial purposes. Encouraged interventions aimed at efficient meters to measure i water consumption – both for condominiums and for single users – and the choices adopted at the local level a support for vulnerable users, in addition to the Water Bonus expected, from 2018, at the national level.
"The college of the Authority - says the president, Stefano Besseghini - has repeatedly indicated, in the Strategic Framework as in the Annual Report, the impneed for a long-term approach that continues to guarantee sustainability and stability of the water system, aiming at reducing the water service divide. The new regulatory convergence scheme and the strategic works plan, together with the strengthening of the systems efficiency control and incentives for quality management, aim to create a homogeneous service in the area, where water is truly a common good, accessible and available universally and not only in some areas of the country".
For this reason the Authority has introduced a new tool, the Plan for Strategic Works (POS), a tool with which the sector body indicates the infrastructural interventions dedicated to complex works with a useful life of more than 20 years and considered priorities to guarantee the quality of the service to users, complete with a time schedule of the interventions to be carried out and government grants available
