Sagunto council approves new water charges for private-well areas and investment
Sagunto's city council approved two new water charges on Thursday — one for areas supplied by wells and another for network investment — costing up to 7.83 euros a month per meter.
Sagunto's city council provisionally approved on Thursday, at its ordinary August plenary session, a modification to the local ordinance governing drinking-water and sewage services and their charges. The vote reflected divisions on the council: it passed with support from the PSOE (Socialist Party), an abstention from EU-Unides Podem (united left), and opposition from PP (Popular Party), IP, Vox and Compromís per Sagunt. The agreement will now be open for public review for thirty days, published in the Official Gazette of the Province of Valencia, on the municipal notice board and in a widely circulated provincial newspaper, before receiving final approval.
The change creates two new charges. The first affects self-supplied areas: it will allow the municipal network to supply drinking water under proper conditions to zones that currently depend on private wells. The council was forced to act after the Public Health Department of the regional health authority (Conselleria de Sanitat) declared that well water unfit for human consumption, under current sanitary standards. Those standards are set by Royal Decree 3/2023 of 10 January, Spain's national rule governing the quality of water intended for human consumption.
The second charge will fund necessary investment in the full water cycle and revives a mechanism similar to one already in place between 2011 and 2021, which the council itself describes as having produced satisfactory results. The monthly amount is set in four tiers according to meter size: 3.955 euros for meters up to 15 millimetres and 2.5 cubic metres per hour; 4.792 euros up to 20 millimetres and 4 cubic metres per hour; 6.075 euros up to 25 millimetres and 6.3 cubic metres per hour; and 7.833 euros for meters larger than 30 millimetres and above 6.3 cubic metres per hour. The council frames the measure around four goals: strengthening the resilience of water supply, activating alternative supply sources for uses such as irrigation, improving drainage in flood-prone spots, and renewing infrastructure that has become obsolete.
The service has been physically run since 2009 by Empresa Mixta Aigües de Sagunt, S.A., a municipally owned mixed company responsible for the town's entire water cycle: from water collection and household supply to sewage, discharge control, and wastewater treatment before it is returned to the environment.
Charges are organised by service — drinking water and sewage — each with a fixed fee and a variable one based on consumption; only the drinking-water charge also includes amortisation of the smart-metering equipment installed in recent years. This is not the first time Aigües de Sagunt's management has stirred debate in town: in 2016 the mixed company itself approved a reduction in bills, and earlier this year the Local Police worked with Aigües de Sagunt to detect illegal connections to the network, a form of fraud that directly affects how costs are shared among residents who do pay for their consumption.
According to Ajuntament de Sagunt (Sagunto City Council) — Actualidad, with additional background from Aigües de Sagunt's official page and from Wikipedia on national water-quality regulations.