Chris Short BA BSc DMS CEng MIChemE MCIWEM
water quality consultant

11^th ENASB, Faro, Portugal 12-15 October 2004

This conference with the special theme Quality of Service and Regulation was organised by APESB, the Portuguese Association for Studies of Basic Sanitation, and attracted around 350 delegates to the University of the Algarve’s Gambelas campus in Faro.

One of the opening speakers was the new minister for the environment and he intimated that there would be some changes in the regulatory regime, although without specifying what these might be. The minister Luis Nobre Guedes also referred to the severe shortage of water in the Algarve and the imminent need for restrictions on use. He also called for the completion of the Odelouca dam, work on which was suspended in 2003 when a complaint lodged by the Nature Protection League (LPN) was accepted by the European Union, which subsequently cut off further funding for the project. The minister laid some of the blame for the supply situation at the door of the environmentalists, calling for them to "reflect on the reality" of a choice between a water shortage or a dam that could have negative impacts on the environment.

An impressive demonstration followed of the web-based national inventory of systems of water supply and wastewater (INSAAR). This contains a great deal of physical and financial data with statistics, trends and graphical presentations and a flexible enquiry tool.

In the second session we had a description of the regulatory arrangements in Portugal from the new regulator, Jaime Melo Baptista. He is the economic and environmental regulator for water and sewerage services and solid wastes, but currently this involves advice to the minister rather than direct control. He envisaged changes to the regulatory model and greater independence for the regulator. There is currently a mixed system of provision of water services, with economic regulation applied to private companies which are contracted to provide services to many municipalities. It appears that the contract prices are determined each year in contrast to the 5 year cycle in England and Wales; some do not consider even the 5 years long enough for cost effective planning.

The next speaker from the Competition Authority introduced a debate over whether the companies should be allowed to aggregate to achieve economies of scale, which might result in there being very few such entities in Portugal and therefore little scope for internal comparisons. As well as the ideal size of companies the ideal length of contract needed to be determined. Another speaker, a consultant but apparently the former regulator, considered the present arrangements not to involve much real privatisation as the government was often a major shareholder. He strongly advocated the development of privatisation.

The UK arrangements were described in presentations by John Ballard (formerly head of the Water division in DEFRA) on progress with delivering water quality, and myself on economic regulation in England and Wales. Issues of interest to the delegates were the ability of the private companies to deal directly with the consumers and the separation of economic regulation, environmental regulation and drinking water quality regulation.

There was a sizeable exhibition in which it was interesting to find a Severn Trent Services stand promoting the ClorTec system for in-situ generation of sodium hypochlorite.

Unfortunately I was able to attend only the first day of this four-day event, thus missing many technical presentations and various site visits. However, a CD-ROM containing about 80 papers and a book of resumés were provided, and I am sure that this is a valuable resource for anyone able to tackle Portuguese.

View a list of the papers presented with English translation of the titles – LIST OF PAPERS

I will be pleased to provide further information about any papers of interest, as far as is practicable.

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