Boulos plan accepted by Lula threatens 94 million without treated sewage

The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) has indicated that it wants to stop one of the main social advances in recent years in Brazil: the implementation of the sanitation framework, approved in July 2020 with ambitious goals to guarantee the universalization of treated sewage and of drinking water by 2033. Recent statements by Rui Costa, Minister of the Civil House, reveal the intention to modify crucial points of the law, through a new decree whose publication is scheduled for the next few days.

Rui Costa’s speeches are in line with a trend that the PT had already been signaling since the end of 2022, when the party gave prominence to federal deputy Guilherme Boulos (PSOL-SP) in the discussion on basic sanitation in the transitional cabinet.

Boulos is against the sanitation framework on points such as the requirement for bidding to sign contracts, the role of a federal agency for regulating the sector – such as the National Agency for Water and Basic Sanitation (Ana) – and the emphasis on private sector participation to improve services. Prior to the milestone, city halls could sign contracts without bidding with state-owned sanitation companies, which favored the maintenance of these companies’ privileges and the relaxation of service targets for the population.

The lack of basic sanitation is one of the main social tragedies in the country. In the last diagnosis made by the National Sanitation Information System (Snis), with data from 2020, 94.1 million Brazilians still did not have access to sewage networks, and 35 million were without treated water. The picture is especially serious in the Northeast and North regions.

Among the causes of the persistence of this problem over the decades are precisely the lack of goals for sanitation companies, the existence of irregular contracts and the lack of standardization by the sector’s regulatory body. In some municipalities, concessions are made to companies without proven technical or economic capacity to provide services.

Marco ended sanitation state privileges and attracted investments

The sanitation framework attempted to address the aforementioned problems with a series of measures: prohibiting open-bid contracts for water and sewage treatment companies; setting performance targets for these companies; attributing to a federal agency, the National Water and Basic Sanitation Agency (Ana), the role of regulating the sector; creating regional blocks for the administration of sanitation instead of municipalizing the issue (in many cases, the same river can cross several municipalities, which justifies the regionalization of the service); and stimulating competition between companies in the sector, whether private or state-owned, through public tenders.

“The great merit of the milestone is exactly trying to establish a deadline for this service to be truly universalized to the population”, says sanitation specialist Luiz Firmino, a researcher at the Center for Studies and Regulation in Infrastructure (Ceri) of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV). ). “When you find cities that have a service provider that doesn’t have any goals, doesn’t have a regular contract signed, no obligations… How can you expect sanitation to advance under these conditions? What the framework tries to do is end with these cases”.

Another asset of the framework, for Firmino, is to regionalize sanitation instead of municipalizing the issue. “First, you have an environmental problem: a river cuts through a municipality and passes through two, three or four more until it reaches the estuary, for example. Let’s say that the municipality of the estuary does its part, and the municipalities above do not. You will have the waters and rivers that pass through that municipality polluted in the same way. The concept of regionalization leads to an integrated look at the environmental issue and the economic issue. The more scale you give to the service, the better. You optimize the infrastructure of the treatment stations to have a better result”, he explains.

The measures have had an effect. The milestone attracted the interest of companies to invest in sanitation in Brazil. In 2022, for example, there was a significant 15% increase in investments. The new government’s ideas, however, could threaten some of these innovations and scare away the private sector in particular.

Costa has made it clear a few times, for example, that he is against the regulation of contracts by a national agency. “Ana is the agency for regulating the use of water in federal rivers. State rivers are the responsibility of the state agency,” he said recently, according to Agência Infra. “Where is it defined that a federal water agency is going to make a reference norm for bidding for water or sewage for a city or state? Where is that? The granting power is the municipality”, he added.

In early 2023, Lula revoked two decrees by former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) that regulated the 2020 law. Both followed the same spirit of the rules established by the landmark. One of them required proof of the financial capacity of the sanitation companies; the other regulated some requirements for access to federal resources in this area.

Also in January, the Lula government decided to superimpose the regulatory role of Ana foreseen by the framework, with a decree that assigns a similar function to the National Secretariat for Environmental Sanitation (SNSA) of the Ministry of Cities. As explained by the report People’s Gazette, the decree goes against the sanitation framework, which provided for this role to be exercised only by Ana. Last year, when he was part of the transitional cabinet, Boulos had already stated that “it is very harmful for you to have a regulatory agency, like Ana, with superpowers and no control over society”.

In Firmino’s view, the agency does not have “superpowers”. “Ana is doing a very good job in a technical way. The reference norms are mainly contract rules and tariff rules. There are public hearings to discuss with society and with specialists which are the best rules for each scope. Ana has a very good team and is structuring a very capable sanitation sector. It will not have superpower, because the subnational and state agencies remain with their full autonomy. What Ana will try to do is establish minimum rules so that everyone has a way to mark themselves in the which is in fact a good regulation, a good hiring”, he comments.

For Firmino, one of the advantages of Ana’s work is to solve the cases of regulatory agencies that do not have the adequate structure to provide sanitation services to the population. “There are state regulators with well-structured sanitation and tariff policy chambers, with teams studying the subject. But today, there are also municipal regulators who are within a small sector of the city hall without any structure. So, Ana’s objective is to create parameters These agencies without any structure can, in a stroke, change the tariff value, modify a pre-established goal… And then you have no security”.

To justify its aversion to the landmark, the Lula government has already claimed to the media that it wants to “unlock investments” in the area, and that the format of regulation through a national agency is “plastering” companies and usurping state and state competences. municipalities.

The report of People’s Gazette questioned the Ministry of Cities about the idea of ​​modifying the sanitation framework, but the folder had not responded until the end of the afternoon of this Tuesday (21).

Ranking reveals profound inequality in sewage treatment in Brazil; Marco could help solve it

On Monday (20), Instituto Trata Brasil published the Saneamento Ranking 2023, an annual survey on the situation of the largest Brazilian municipalities in relation to basic sanitation, in aspects such as access to drinking water and sewage treatment. The ranking can be accessed at this link.

The profound inequality between the North and Northeast regions and the South and Southeast regions was the main problem observed, especially with regard to sewage treatment.

“There is great inequality in terms of access to basic sanitation when we look at the different regions of the country”, says Luana Pretto, president of Trata Brasil.

According to her, the main reason for this large difference is the disparity in the level of investment. “When we look at the 20 best positioned cities, they invested R$166 per year per inhabitant in sanitation, while the cities that are in the worst positions invested an average of R$55 per year per inhabitant. is that without investment there is no progress in basic sanitation, whether this investment is public or private”, he says.

For Luana, the sanitation framework as it is today could help resolve this inequality in sewage treatment and access to drinking water. “The framework brings some metrics, such as the need to prove economic and financial capacity. It establishes that such companies have the capacity to financially universalize such and such municipalities. It sheds light on the data, so that we can understand what the sanitation scenario is in each one of the regions. In addition, it provides legal certainty with the regulatory norms being edited by a national agency. This brings greater security to the contribution of private investments”, he comments.

“The universalization of sanitation will not happen only with the public company or only with the private company, but it is important to have a union of efforts to think about what is the best solution in each of the regions of Brazil”, he adds.