Allocation of Costs and Benefits in the Water Framework Directive: A Dutch Exploration - Water and Agriculture: Sustainability, Markets and Policies - page 37

The process of the policy analysis is focussed on strong interaction between national
and regional level. This means a cautious balance between national uniformity and
regional freedom. Uniformity is of great importance to make an unambiguous national
assessment as part of the SCBA on the basis of regional input. However there has to be
sufficient freedom for interpretation on regional preferences, choices and assessments,
within the framework of the regional management responsibility. Communication on
steps to take, related decisions and consequences is very important. At this moment,
interest groups and regional and local managers block the exploration of significant sets
of measures. By doing so, not an exploration but a pre-sort on a preferential scenario is
made. Resistance against the exploration of a range of solutions originates from fear to be
committed to several explored but less attractive measures. The Dutch approach, close
interaction between national and regional level for an optimal result, seems in practice to
be less realistic than in theory. Communication on underlying principles is behind, which
causes practical problems.
Testing the measures within a policy option occurs on the basis of to what extent the
objectives are reached — in other words, testing the effects of the complete set of
measures in relation to the task (reaching objectives). However, next to the measures,
autonomous (demographic and economic) and technological developments influence the
objectives. These autonomous developments are described in different national scenarios,
which have to be included in the analysis. The effect of the measures is considered
compared to autonomous developments. Choosing a scenario as an autonomous
development can have enormous consequences for the sets of measures to be selected,
and has to be discussed explicitly and decided on.
4. Cost recovery
Cost recovery is a separate task in the WFD. The WFD is based on the polluter/user-
pays principle. The costs of defined water services have to be covered by the users of
these services. Civilians, for example, have to pay all the costs that are being made for
their drinking water, to the water supply company. No subsidies are allowed for providing
drinking water.
The analysis of the current levels of cost-recovery of water services is very important
for assessing the final implications of the chosen programme of measures. To investigate
costs of water services, financial costs, environmental costs and resource costs have to be
taken into account (Wateco, 2003). Environmental costs are defined as representing the
costs of damage that water uses impose on the environment and ecosystems and those
who use the environment. Resource costs are defined as the costs of forgone
opportunities, which other uses suffer due to the depletion of the resource being its
natural rate of recharge or recovery (Wateco, 2003).
Environmental costs should be taken into account in the costs of providing water
services such as, for example, waste water collection and treatment. In order to be able to
assess the level of cost recovery, one therefore has to know the total costs, including
environmental costs, and the way these costs are paid for by the different users of the
water service through existing pricing and financing mechanisms. This allows us to assess
the extent to which the 'polluter pays principle' applies. Including in this assessment an
analysis of the level of compensation received by different water users for any damage
caused by a specific water use gives us an idea to what extent environmental costs are