Patricia Fernández-Aracil

Water distribution management in South-East Spain: A guaranteed system in a context of scarce resources

Growing global scarcity of water is forcing a change in their management models and the need to implement good governance schemes, understood as the implementation of legal, institutional and economic mechanisms that enable the efficient organisation of the activity developed by all of the agents involved in water management. In this sense, one of the greatest achievements in Spanish hydraulic history is the organisation called Mancomunidad de los Canales del Taibilla (MCT), whose existence usually goes unnoticed in one of the most arid regions of Europe: the South-East of Spain. Therefore, this study will analyse the MCT management model, based on the good governance of water, as well as their positive socio-economic impacts on population and areas supplied as a consequence of the quality and continuity of the urban supply, which has been extraordinarily beneficial for resolving health and hygiene and comfort problems. This is all thanks to the continual search for new sources of supply, in addition to efforts to improve leakage control, modernisation of management, educational campaigns implemented and the efficient and sustainable use of resources without financial unbalances.

Drivers of Water Supply Costs in Mediterranean Spain

This work analyses the drivers of water supply costs relying on a panel data model within a sample of Spanish Mediterranean municipalities between 2014 and 2016, in the provinces of Alicante and Murcia. These provinces have been chosen due to their common feature: water scarcity in the Southeast of Spain. The source of the dependent variable of the econometric model (costs) is a new dataset called actual cost of services of local entities (CESEL, in Spanish), which is published by Ministry of Finance and Civil Service. This new source emerged in response to financial problems experienced by local entities after the global crisis. Bearing in mind the homogeneity of municipalities studied in terms of water management, selected drivers of the equation focus on urban growth and demographic factors. The findings show that urban variables, such as higher net urban density, have a significant impact on the decrease of water supply costs.