Approval of the Strategic Plan for Water Supply and Wastewater and Stormwater Management 2030

On February 5th of this year, the Council of Ministers published the Resolution no. 23/2024, approving the Strategic Plan for Water Supply and Wastewater and Stormwater Management 2030 (PENSAARP 2030). 

With the main aim of ensuring the long-term sustainability of the water sector, this plan outlines the sector's main guidelines for the next decade, including not only water supply and wastewater management, but also rainwater management, in a call for a convergence of efforts and ambition in overcoming the challenges arising from water scarcity and climate change. 

PENSAARP 2030 is made up of two volumes: the Strategic Plan, with its broad guidelines (volume 1) and the Action Plan, detailing the 85 (!) measures recommended and their respective metrics and incentives (volume 2). In turn, these measures are divided into three levels of relative importance: 21 priority measures due to their high criticality in achieving the sector's objectives, 31 medium-priority measures that must maintain the sector's attention, and 33 measures that (only apparently) are less of a priority, but cannot detract from the sector's attention.

Without prejudice to the other objectives and respective measures included in PENSAARP 2030, we highlight the following among the 10 objectives considered to be priorities (and the respective 18 measures), as they are particularly relevant to the environment:

1.    Economic and financial sustainability, in order to:
a)    Ensure the recovery of expenses essentially by income from tariffs, and, if necessary, subsidiarity by taxes and transfers;
b)    Promote a sustainable policy in terms of tariff regulation, using transparent criteria when setting tariffs and ensuring financial transparency; 
c)    Ensure the improvement of the economic and financial performance of management entities, applying rigorous management accounting standards and more harmonized regulatory evaluation. 
This objective will be achieved by defining specific regulations, as provided for under the terms of the Water Law, approved by Law no. 58/2005 of December 29th, and by enforcing management accounting rules and the regulatory evaluation system.

2.    Efficiency in water quality, in the area of wastewater, by seeking to improve the quality of the wastewater discharged, in accordance with the discharge permits, in an effort to reverse the degradation of the bodies of water.
This objective is expected to be achieved through the revision of the urban wastewater directive and proper planning of maintenance tasks, in order to minimize the number of discharges of treated water and ensure that they are carried out in periods with the least impact on the status of the bodies of water.

3.    Water efficiency, with a view to guaranteeing a reduction in water losses in supply systems and undue inflows into wastewater systems, through the implementation of specific interventions by management entities, such as performance-based contracts.

4.    Efficiency in security, resilience and climate action, so that the population has access to all services safely, in the face of normal operating situations, but also with resilience, in the face of natural or provoked anomalous situations, such as climate change, droughts, floods, earthquakes and other emerging challenges.
PENSAARP 2030 determines that this objective should be achieved by promoting constructive and operational interventions to strengthen adaptation to the impact of climate change on water services, in order to reduce vulnerability to droughts, floods and variability in water resources.

5.    Sustainability of human capital, so that management entities ensure adequate numbers, skills, continuous training, job balance and renewal of the human capital of the services, information sharing networks and knowledge transfer, as well as safety and health at work.
To this end, it is necessary to promote the improvement of the human resources of the management entities, the sector regulator and the environmental authority, not only in terms of number and qualifications, but also in terms of diversity of backgrounds and the balance of the age pyramid, monitoring this through indicators that cover aspects of the quantitative and qualitative adequacy of human resources, the adequacy of the age balance and the adequacy of the gender balance.

The Resolution came into force on February 6th and can be consulted here.