Strategic Moves - Regional Environmental Center for Central and ...

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C H A P T E R 6
WAT E R A N D WA S T E U T I L I T I E S I N S E E — S TAT U S A N D R E F O R M
S T R AT E G I C M O V E S
and the daily routine of enterprises within a sound integrated system functioning
under universal conditions over the entire area. Institutional models of regionalisation
may take the following forms:
• Municipalities retain their own service company.
• One company is responsible for the entire collection system.
• Municipalities remain responsible for internal collection systems within settlements,
while haulage between settlements and the landfill is carried out by a
different service company (linked to the central landfill).
• A combination of the above.
Associations of municipalities
One way to ensure economy of scale is to create associations of municipalities
developing regional solutions. Such efforts are severely hindered by issues of joint
property ownership, expense sharing, and other costs that are unrecoverable from
co-owners. Regional experience suggests that joint service associations require specialised,
complex legislation, since municipalities give up fundamental rights, such
as tariff setting and property ownership.
Lack of proper incentives for necessary inter-municipal cooperation
Achieving economies of scale is a burning issue, especially in the area of solid
waste management. The setting up of a municipal solid waste management system
in compliance with EU directives and standards — including the construction
of new, modern facilities as well as the organisation of the service itself —
is prohibitively expensive for most SEE municipalities. The environmental standards
that modern landfills are obliged to meet, including the provision of plastic
linings, drainage networks, monitoring wells, leachate treatment facilities and
landfill gas management systems, as well as other indivisible elements such as
compactor vehicles, fencing, weighing stations, permanent guards etc., make
small, local landfills unfeasible. The costs can only be commercially justified and
borne by a large number of users. It is therefore the environmental standards and
technology costs that trigger economies of scale and the regionalisation of SWM
systems, unless one municipality is large enough to economically justify a solid
waste management system with individual state-of-the-art disposal, which is usually
the case in capital cities. Apart from technical improvements to the MSW
management system, there are certain policy, legislative, economic, financial and
institutional prerequisites (REC, 2009b).
Private sector participation
The present publication does not have an ideological basis and does not advocate
stronger or weaker private sector participation (PSP). Private sector participation
is only one of the options for providing greater financing and better
management for the utilities and it is inevitably accompanied by certain risks that