eau&3e - festival dell'acqua · demand forecasts micro‐analysis of water consumption...

EAU&3Ela durabilité des services d’eau

dans les grandes villes

EAU&3ESustainable WSS Management

in Large Cities


dans les grandes villes Water scarcity : natural and man‐made(Sau reservoir serving Barcelona)



Centennial drought in Barcelona(same reservoir 18 months later: climate change?)

Water level Aug 2006

Next: Water transfers from Ebro ? From Rhone? Tankers?



important peri‐urban growth

Average water consumption in the central part : 130 litres/cap./day

Average water consumption in suburbia : > 200 lcd, even up to 500 lcd

May be new ways of living inadapted to Mediterranean climate ?

But water conservation all the more possible

(like in California !)

Source : Rivera, Capellades, Sauri, 2001


dans les grandes villes The ‘membrane’ answer

• In 2010 AGBAR started a desal plant and even wastewater reuse

• Low investment costs, high o&m costs translated into pricing

• Desal water incentivates conservation !(now this desal plant might be idling …)


dans les grandes villes Germany at the other end: shrinking cities, water demand decline, territorial solutions

11

Demographic Change

Population dynamics at a small scale Local integration of public services (Stadtwerk)

But increasing financial integration at regional level

Eco-neighbourhoods for water-food-energy nexus

Cooperative agreements with farmers against diffuse pollution in drinking water


dans les grandes villes Retro-impact of water demand on tariffs!(why is water more expensive in DK and DE?)

• Water costs: mostly fixed costsFrom 80 to 95% of total cost

Water demand decrease

↓ total receipts → total costs ↑ water rates

Bill = fixed part + variable part X conso.



Water demand decline reveals new issues

- Financial risk: unbalanced budget – lack of funds for infrastructure renewal

- Management risk: distrust between customers and operator, well drillers and water harvesters exiting, except during droughts!

- Sanitary risk: non potable water intruding the public water supply network; + emerging micro-pollutants and rainwater issue

- Environmental risk: pollution of rivers and groundwater, total consumption not reduced, vulnerability increased with climate change

- Social risk: progressive tariffs supposed to target water wasters, but yet hitting large poor families

- This is why the various dimensions of sustainability must be handled together => EAU&3E project


dans les grandes villes Are WSS sustainable?

1

2

3

Economics

Environment

Equity

4

1 – Enough investment to renew the decades’ old heavy infrastructure?

2 – How much more needed to improve environnemental performance (EU Directives, national laws, etc.)

3 ‐ If 1 and 2 are met, is water price still socially acceptable? Social tariffs? Why not return to citizens (taxes) on top of sole consumer‐pays?

4 – And politically? Need of a 4th axis, on governance and re‐territorialization

Europe has some of the best WSS in the world. High connection rates, moderate consumption, pollution control; Yet looming crisis

Water consumption decline: good/bad news?


dans les grandes villes Why do we need a 4th axis on governance?

• New trends of consumption decline help discovering that the 3 dimensions of sustainability are not necessarily compatible:

– With volumetric tariffs, water conservation is opposed to the fixed costs of assets renewal

– Full cost pricing may be unaffordable for part of customers (e.g. large poor families)

– Growing block tariffs may have unsuspected social impacts, and

– Sophisticated tariffs may incur high administrative costs

• Consumer justice does not equate social justice

• A tariff which would satisfy all dimensions of sustainability is out of reach

• Balancing the 3 E’s in any tariff entails a political choice, which should result from improved knowledge on the 3 dimensions.

• Now we distinguish two dimensions of governance: internal and external



Internal governance and sustainability

• New relationships to be developed between authorities in charge of WSS technical operators, and the various types of users.

• New modes of WSS management can rely on smart meters to set up a real‐time relationship with users and help them fight leaks or wastage rapidly

• The introduction of non‐conventional WSS systems allowing people to partly ‘disconnect’ from the services should be discussed collectively before being encouraged or criticized.

• But the hottest issue is to discuss the tariff and to check its equity between types of customers, including a possible replacement of volumetric tariffs by lump sum payments (larger fixed part) or taxation.

• This is why refined modelling of consumption determination factors and redistributivity of tariffs should be used more systematically



Redistributivity: possible toolsNumber of people Behind the meter

Income Deciles

Who pays less than1% -- more than 3 % of their income on water ?Who changes category if the tarif changes ?

Thrifty

hedonists


dans les grandes villesDemand forecasts

Micro‐analysis of water consumption factors beyond traditional price / income elasticity studies

Paris & Languedoc‐Roussillon + Los Angeles• Trying to make use of smart metering to work at census tract level• Econometric analysis including climate and housing types • Impact of individual solutions (well drilling, water harvesting)

Example : probable consumption by lot size

Confronted with real water use to find wells

Ortho-photoCadastre

Traitement image + Croisement

SIG+ + =



External governance issues

• Deals with the relations of any WSS utility with other stakeholders: neighboring utilities, regulators, other levels of government, expertise, public works companies etc.

• Sustainability issues frequently link WSS services and water resources allocation / protection, and about balancing territorial and technology‐based solutions, or mixing both

• WSS services = a water use giving one of the highest values to water, with very important turnover; and as such are concerned with implementing the WFD: paying for the recovery of the aquatic environment’s quality

• In most countries we reviewed, territorial solutions include upscaling utilities, if only for making economies of scale

• But upscaling can be combined with technology sophistication (e.g. desal‐) and with downscaling policies (e.g. eco‐neighborhoods).


dans les grandes villesTerritorial governance

• upscaling : consolidation of utilities at supra‐local level (Italy); articulation of WSS utilities with water resources; separation between regional production and local distribution, like in Portugal or Australia

• downscaling : development of decentralized solutions at infra‐local level (eco‐neighborhoods, circular economy)

• But also, seawater desalination, waste water treatment and reuse, and various measures to limit per capita consumption (e.g. smart meters) :Technology sophistication(e.g. Barcelona)

Examples of WSS services territorial dynamics:Upscaling, downscaling, and technology sophistication

Mixt ADP ‐ local

Intermunicipal

Isolated communes

P o r t u g a l



Financing territorial solutions: in water bills or not?

• In article 9 of the WFD, water users should pay the full cost of services rendered by water, including resource or users costs, and environmental costs: resp. abstractor pays and polluter pays

• This is translated in French Agences de l’eau by abstraction and pollution discharge levies, which are paid in addition to water + wastewater bills

• But according to the 3 T’s of OECD, they could rather be paid through taxes or transfers, in particular through mutualised service fees to manage the water bodies being considered common pool resources

• This brings to differentiate water resources, which are either public goods or common pool, and public services, which are particular club goods at least in Europe (club goods with public service constraints)

• Water resources and village or irrigation water can be common pool, but in cities, water supply is a club good and a commercial service (payback infrastructure and per volume with meter)



Water services problems in France

• Like Italy before Legge Galli, large number of small utilities until 2014, but also large joint boards, frequently delegated to private companies (lease or management contracts, few concessions)

• But two laws of 2014-15 impose the constitution of metropoles and EPCI, which should reduce drastically the number of utilities.

• There is a return to public management (Paris) but sometimes through creation of publicly owned private company SPL (Grenoble) – (NL-DE)

• 5 million septic tanks are bound to stay, but controlled by SPANC (public services); 1 050 000 km of water mains => insufficient renewal

• One solution might be to reorganise water supply in hamlets with non conventional water systems (group water schemes in Ireland)

• But for urban areas, WSS systems consolidation will help recover full internal costs (incl. Assets depreciation) with the support of Agences de l’eau



Water policy incoherence in France

• Agences de l’eau were created in 1964 to mutualise the funding of sewage works and multipurpose reservoirs, following the Ruhr model

• The abstraction and pollution levies were initially paid by industry and local authorities, but these obtained the transfer of levies in water bills

• Levies were considered as mutualised service fees not taxes

• After 5 decades, the system has changed, and 85% of the agences’ budgets come from domestic water bills, but levies are now taxes

• Implementing the WFD and the FD implies to redirect the money to aquatic environment improvement and flood control, which should not be funded by water bills if no link with WSS services, all the more so that it is anti-social

• French government decentralised aquatic environment and flood control to the new EPCI, and allowed them to levy a new GEMAPI tax

• But at the same time housing taxes are being suppressed ! And the budget of the agences de l’eau is capped and called to fund other policies unrelated to water (e.g. hunting control)



Water as an ‘impure’ public good: two kinds(from R. Musgrave, P. Samuelson & V. & E. Ostrom)

Rivalry between

Yes

Users

No

Yes

Possibility

Pure Private orMarket Goods

Chile / bottled water Wheeling pb

Toll or ClubGoods

Public services in developed countries

To Exclude

NoCommon Pool

ResourcesLocal irrigation

Overexploited aquiferSmall watercourse

Fully PublicGoods

Lighthouse / navigable rivers / Water supply in

Global south ?


dans les grandes villes Water as an ‘impure’ public good 1- CPR <= there are two different kinds => 2- WSS

Rivalry between

Yes

Users

No

Yes

Possibility

Private orMarket Goods

Chile / bottled water Wheeling pb

Toll or ClubGoods

WSS Services in developed countries

To Exclude

NoCommon Pool

ResourcesPublic Trust

overexploited aquiferSmall watercourses

Fully PublicGoods

Lighthouses / navigable Rivers /

WSS in global South

Freedom & equality

Coercion & equity


dans les grandes villes Future Perspectives

• There are alternatives to centralised WSS systems. German water reuse projects on the lead: eco-neighborhoods, roof gardening etc.

• But in a vast European periphery, there are still unconnected people, to waste water but also to water, and there is room for experiments of semi-central systems managed in common pool. Also in the US

• European parliament elections could open the way to adaptations of the Directives to favour mutual management of water resources, in a territorial conception of the polluter-pays principle

• In each member State, a debate should take place on the recovery of full costs, balancing between the OECD’s 3 T’s



Thanks for your attentionAnd … welcome to our blog :

http://eau3e.hypotheses.org(Follow the link ATHENS to view European

WSS sustainability presentations in English)

eau&3e - festival dell'acqua · demand forecasts micro‐analysis of water consumption...

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