The current formula used to determine the costs of rainwater evacuation rely on the quantity of water measured by the National Meteorology Authority (ANM) and preset drainage coefficients, leading to cases where, during a rainy month, a low-consumption household pays more to evacuate rainwater.
The rainwater evacuation costs are included in the utilities bill, but not spelled out distinctly, and rationalized by arguing that it is soaked up by the sewerage system, which entails certain expenses. The cost has for a long time been determined using norms issued in 1981, during the communist regime, which provided a single value for the quantity of fallen rainwater, irrespective of region.
“Although, it has been statistically confirmed that the amount of precipitation varies from one region of the country to the next, after 1990, in the absence of other national regulations, the authorities continued to apply the same coefficients, through local or county authority decisions,” the document says.
On the basis of a unified national cost system, a government decision was adopted in 2002, stating that the quantity of “meteoric water” taken over by the sewage systems would be determined by multiplying the quantity of rainfall averaged for a number of years by the total area of property declared by every consumer. This system, which used a multi-year average and yielded bills that were similar one month after another, resulted in consumers complaining they had to pay for rainwater even in dry months, the document says.
Later, in 2007, the authorities issued a regulation whereby the amount of meteoric water carried by the sewage system was to be determined by multiplying the quantity of precipitation determined by ANM for the previous month by the total area of property declared by the consumers and by preset drainage coefficients. This resulted in some households paying more for the evacuation of rainwater than for their own water consumption.
According to the document, the authorities are willing to amend the current formula, if a parliamentary consensus to change the Law on the water supply and sewage system arises.
Romania gets on average 200 days with precipitation per year.
ANM director Ion Sandu has said several times that Romania will see increasingly frequent and violent weather phenomena, as well as substantial precipitation, because of the greenhouse effect combined with natural global warming causes.
Data from the National Statistics Institute reveals that state-regulated prices have increased compared with 1990 as much as 37,000 times, or two to ten times above the rate of inflation in the last 21 years. Water and sewage, gas, heating and electricity are at the top of the list, even though some of these segments have not been deregulated.
The rate of inflation over this period was 375,288.6%, meaning the costs of the water and sewage services have gone up by 3,713,336%. In the period 2001-2011, these costs increased 6.7 times (almost three times faster than other prices).