In the House of Representatives, Unidos plus one opposition vote approved the emergency law for ASSA

Friday 28.6.2024

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Last update 21:58

With the sole support of Juan José Piedrabuena (Barrio para la Gente), in Deputies, the ruling Unidos bloc managed to sanction the law that declares the provision of the public drinking water service in a state of emergency until December 31, 2024. drainage and sanitation by Aguas Santafesinas SA (ASSA). The message from the Executive Branch had already been approved by the Senate and the ruling party closed ranks to not accept modifications that were especially proposed by Justicialism. To amend questions of possible impact on shared resources of municipalities and communes, the ruling party voted on a declaration with suggestions to the Executive Branch.

The purpose of the emergency declaration is to “urgently address the serious deficit situation faced by Aguas Santafesinas SA in order to promote the preservation of the environmental, social and economic-financial sustainability of the provision of the service, ensuring its continuity, regularity, generality and obligatory nature.”

The regulation is valid until the end of the year with the possibility of an extension of another calendar year and allows the Executive Branch “to determine the tariff regime for the public service of drinking water, sewage and sanitation within the scope of the concession under article 3 of Law No. 11,220.” It orders the preparation of this new table establishing “values, prices, charges and tariff components in the different service modalities and user categories, the subsidy regime, the application of new alternatives that tend to cover the operating costs and any other distinction or categorization that is considered fair, reasonable and timely.” It also provides that the tariff should tend “towards the environmental, economic and social sustainability of the provision of the service,” guaranteeing “the protection of the rights of users of the service, for which public hearings must be held prior to determining the tariff.”

Another chapter delegates to ASSA the operation, maintenance, administration and exploitation of the aqueduct system and requires the towns through which the water pipes pass to connect to the network. A controversial article is the one that allows the Executive to withhold co-participation funds from municipalities and communes that owe invoices for services. The last article orders the Executive to develop a new regulatory framework before the expiration of the contract between the state and ASSA.

The emergency in ASSA is the first special law of the current legislative administration that was not supported by any of the opposition blocs. Furthermore, the Justicialist interbloc was very critical in its rejections of the project, especially in the speeches of Lucila De Ponti, Marcos Corach, Miguel Rabbia and Verónica Porcelli Baró Graf. There was also no shortage of criticism from the left through Carlos Del Frade (FAS) or from the right-wing blocks with positions of Omar Paredes (Somos Vida) and Natalia Armas Belavi (Vida y Familia).

Dionisio Scarpin, Rubén Galassi and Pablo Farías were in charge of presenting the reasons for the favorable vote. The radical opened the time for speeches with the law already sanctioned and the socialists were refuting arguments from the opposition critics. Then, the president, Clara García, did not open the possibility of continuing the discussion due to the claims of De Ponti and Corach for having felt they were alluded to in the speeches of the socialists.

“We cannot doubt that ASSA is in an emergency when it comes to providing services and trying to reach the entire population,” said Scarpin, who, like the socialists, recalled that the concession is only in fifteen cities in the province and receives million-dollar subsidies from the Provincial status, an issue that does not reach the rest of the province. “The law is a starting point for a discussion on various issues, not a point of arrival,” for the northern radical.

Paredes maintained that there is no rush to vote on emergencies and, like several of his peers, he stressed that cooperatives that provide drinking water complained about not having been invited to present before the committees of Deputies. Corach also spoke of haste and lack of consultation with the actors. “There is not a single line of the law that talks about sanitation, it only talks about rates and seizing funds from municipalities and communes,” he stressed and then spoke of rate increases of 546% this year and almost 4000% for the bulk water. “This law has serious unconstitutionality defects,” he said to talk about future judicial proposals by mayors and communal presidents.

The arguments of Galassi and Farías were political but nuanced with numbers and percentages. “Water is a human right, it must have a value for there to be reasonable consumption. Today the rate is distorted and a house with two rooms pays the same as someone who has a pool and uses running water to fill it,” he added. He noted that until 2019, the rate covered 70% of ASSA’s operation and in 2023 less than 25% to also underline the capital contributions made by the state with the laying of aqueducts. “We defend the state company but we assume that generating drinking water involves efforts and costs,” he stressed.

Farías wanted to reassure the public in the face of claims that he considered reckless and compared the rate with those residents of Santa Fe and Rosario who do not have drinking water and who must resort to buying bottles of drinking water and using the well, estimating a monthly cost of $50,000. “Water must be valued and the state subsidy must be balanced because in recent years, the rate subsidy benefited the wealthiest sectors of society that live in areas served by ASSA,” he concluded.

Paredes complained that he did not have the list of municipalities and communes that owe ASSA. The socialist Farías said that the list was there, apologized if it was not distributed in the commission and was in charge of sending it to the different blocks.

The list includes 49 municipalities and communes with a debt in June exceeding $144 million, headed by the municipality of San Genaro, department of San Jerónimo. In the chamber, Farías said that the Executive’s commitment was not to defund municipalities and communes by removing co-participation. In the case of San Genaro, there are two cooperatives that provide the service and receive water from the central aqueduct, with the municipality being jointly responsible for the debt.

After the discussion in the chamber, Omar Perotti and Rubén Galassi met in the hall of the Legislature and spent a long time talking about the situation of ASSA. The socialist had questioned the lack of investment in water supply in the last two years of the socialist administration and the decision to raise rates well below inflation. The former governor reminded him that in the last months of his administration the Executive had to invest millions to make water drinkable due to the historic low water level of the Paraná plus the closure of imports that made the provision of the service extremely difficult.