Descripción
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Over the last two decades water policy in Spain has witnessed profound changes in the way water services are priced at all levels and in all sectors. Levels are defined by the intermediary governmental agencies or private agents that intervene to provide water services, ranging from abstraction out of water bodies to wastewater treatment and disposal. The era of modern Spanish water legislation began in 1985 with the enactment of the Water Act that replaced the old 1879 Water Act (see Chapters 10 and 11). The 1879 Act was to be accompanied by the 1911 Irrigation and Land Reclamation Act. Jointly they granted very generous economic conditions for irrigators that benefited from the State water projects. Agricultural users were asked to repay less than 50% of the project costs, with 25-year reimbursable loans at an interest rate of 1.5%. Overall, farmers¿ charges ended up being about 10 to 20% of the development costs. Operation and maintenance costs have seldom been covered in full. Spanish water policy experienced a radical departure from this state of affairs with the enactment of the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) in December 2000 (see Chapter 16). While the WFD foresees that Member States will implement water charges pursuant to the concept of `cost recovery prices¿ by 2010, Spain¿s present systems of charges are generally a long way from complying with this. This chapter reviews the history of Spanish pricing policies, and conjectures what impact the WFD¿s pricing criterion is likely to have. | |
Internacional
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Si |
DOI
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Edición del Libro
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0 |
Editorial del Libro
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Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. London, UK |
ISBN
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978-0-415-55411-4 |
Serie
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Título del Libro
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Water Policy in Spain |
Desde página
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131 |
Hasta página
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144 |