The World Bank/WBI’s CBNRM Initiative

Authors: Anita Bishofa and Egija Melkere

Tel: +371 702 6411

Fax: +371 782 0442

Email: egija@novell.varam.gov.lv

The investment strategy was established in 1997, it covers all the territory of the Republic of Latvia with an aim to improve the existing situation regarding of water supply and sewerage systems in Latvian small and medium sized towns.

The authors of this case study are involved in work of established investment strategy called 800+ (800 and more small municipalities in the Republic of Latvia) as liaison officers co-ordinating the projects, which one of the components is water supply and sewerage system in each specific project (see a map included).

The strategy has been developed as the means of meeting the overall objective of improving the water supply and sewerage facilities in Latvia, and within the context of earlier work undertaken by the Government of Latvia and in particular the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development.

The strategy is sustainable, co-ordinated and complementary to national priorities, including the environmental development of Latvia. This reason is one of the main objectives of creating this investment policy.

The others contextual factors according politics, economics and social are to improve environmental management capacity in Latvia, identify and develop new legislative and economic means to manage the water and sewerage systems in Latvia, including the development of monitoring systems. Identification of the funds and resources necessary to implement water supply and sewerage schemes in Latvia

In addition to the above, the strategy has also be prepared taking due account of:

• The National Strategy as defined by the National Environmental Policy Plan (NEPP), which identifies the following priorities for attention: serious threats to human health, e.g. low quality of drinking water and irreversible changes in ecosystems, with particular respect to decreasing bio-diversity and landscape deterioration, e.g. caused by eutrophication and deterioration of water ecosystems and transboundry pollution.

As an important factor is Latvia’s international agreements and commitments to improve environmental quality e.g. HELCOM and EU. Latvia, consistent with the priorities set down in the NEPP, is moving towards integration with Europe and one step towards this goal is to improve the water and sewerage facilities, with the eventual aim of meeting the standards set down in the various EU Directives and HELCOM:

• the ‘Freshwater Fish’ Directive (78/659/EEC) which gives water quality standards for surface waters which will support salmonid and cyprinid fish
• the ‘Bathing Water’ Directive (76/160/EEC) which gives water quality standards for surface waters in which human bathing is carried out
• the ‘Surface Water Intended as Abstraction for Drinking Water’ Directive (75/440/EEC) which gives standards for three different classes of surface waters which are to be used for the abstraction of potable water

• the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive
• the Dangerous Substances Directive
• the Protection of Groundwater Directive
• the proposed Directive on Integrated Pollution Protection and Control (IPPC) which aims to limit contamination to all environmental media from the large polluting industries

In 1991 Latvia has recovered an independence from Russia occupy for 50 years. During times of Soviet Union there was not paid attention on environment: the pollution of lakes, rivers and the Baltic Sea. There was not any monitoring system regarding water supply and waste water system in each town. In 1993 was established ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development. The ministry has started a hard job towards setting up control, monitoring institutions, elaborating investment strategies, programs. As one of the investment programs in Latvia is program 800+.

Most towns in Latvia are supplied with water from the Sedimentary Rock Aquifers. The quality of pumps and pipes gives problems in many systems. In some towns it has been necessary to replace the pumps as often as once in two years. Only a few water supply systems in Latvia have installed equipment for iron removal. The usual process in use is pressure filtration, although in a large number of cases this is not in operation. Disinfection with chlorine gas is carried out only in the larger towns. Liquid chlorine (sodium hypochlorite) is not available in Latvia at present. As a consequence, in most towns the ground water is pumped direct into the distribution networks without any treatment. In many towns, the wells are spread over a large area, and each well is individually connected to the distribution network. This practice complicates the implementation of water treatment as it is difficult to provide a cost effective centralised facility. Complaints over turbid and coloured water, distributed in the municipal system, are common in most towns. The cause is normally a combination of iron from the groundwater, bad circulation in the network, and corrosion of the iron pipes. Capacity problems in the distribution networks are common. The situation is made worse because the network is not always formed in loops.

In order to establish the institutional characteristics of water and waste water agencies was constructed on the basis of

• size of the local authorities in terms of population
• economic potential
• structure of enterprises
• geographical distribution

In most local authority areas there are significant numbers of profit enterprises some of which are connected to municipal services. Others have their own systems, which, in some cases, serve limited numbers of residents. Local authorities appear to be badly informed about economic entities in their area. This is, in part, due to the fact that enterprises have to register with the state taxation department, which will not give any information to the local authority. However it is also due to the poor state of local authority records. In one town there are 600 enterprises on the state tax register but only 521 are known to the local authority and of these only 269 have tariff agreements.

It did not appear that local authorities kept a separate account for water and wastewater services or an account for environmental tax receipts. All authorities should name projects, which should qualify, for funding from this specific source but it was not at all clear that all revenues from this source were expended on environmental projects.

The Government of Latvia has laid down a number of requirements, which must be met by local authorities, which wish to be included in the 800 Plus programme. These requirements reflect the conditions laid down by various loan and donor agencies and are as follows:

• the local authority must mobilise from its own resources sufficient funds to meet at least 10% of the cost of the project
• the local authority must undertake to raise its water and wastewater tariffs to a level sufficient to meet the cost of operating and maintaining the systems and to pay off its share of the capital costs
• the local authority shall be prepared to participate in project preparation and in the financing of supervision and shall involve local specialists and authorities in project realisation
• the local authority as the project client shall ensure the project management involves local and foreign specialists as necessary

To fulfil these conditions local authorities will have to improve their administrative effectiveness in three respects:

• they must develop multi year strategies which provide a framework and direction for individual decisions
• they need to improve their capacity to manage their finances and to influence the financing of investments
• They need to construct systems of management, which will enable them to plan and control effectively.

The overall environmental impact of water and wastewater improvement schemes is often overwhelmingly positive. This can be seen by reference to some examples as follows:

• repairing, relining and reconstructing potable water pipelines to reduce leakage has a positive environmental impact by conserving energy and resources, as less water has to be abstracted and treated. Also contamination of water supplies, which often arises when leaks occur will be reduced, thus benefiting public health
• providing in-house potable water supplies to more properties conveys major public health benefits to all those in the country who are not currently connected to the mains water system. Lack of such a facility has been related to health problems and illness
• reconstruction and repair of sewers provides a major environmental benefit by making the discharge of untreated sewage less likely and, thus, prevents surface and underground waters becoming polluted from this source. The fact that untreated sewage will be less likely to escape into the environment also confers significant public health benefits
• refurbishment of wastewater treatment works and provision of treatment for raw sewage discharges confers significant long-term environmental benefits by reducing the pollution load to Latvia’s rivers and the Baltic Sea. This pollution reduction will produce public health benefits, help protect environmentally sensitive areas and help Latvia’s rivers achieve their water quality objectives

This will confer major environmental benefits, in that underground waters, streams and rivers will suffer less pollution, and significant health benefits associated with a reduction in sewage pollution of shallow wells which are extensively used for potable water supply to individual properties.

Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development together with foreign experts and consultants prepares such an investment program. The implementation of investment program is led by 800+ Project implementation program, which is subordinate to Ministry.

The elaborating of such a program shows the capacity to make improvements to environment, to human health. This was the first step for Latvia in the way to elaborate other State investment programs as solid waste management program, hazardous waste management program, and Integrated coastal zone management. All the programs including 800+ are financed through Public Investment Program (30%) of each project costs, the rest of financing can be found through bilateral or multilateral financiers. In addition we include a map with already ongoing projects, and projects under preparation stage within program 800+.

The program 800+ is successfully implemented investment strategy, and this sample can be used in other countries, which haven’t still adjusted its natural recourses management system. We will be happy and honoured to share our experience to others and to get to know the experience of other countries for improving the system of natural recourse management and in the process of integration into European Union.