Last Friday the City of Bermeo and the City of Gernika will decide to give water management to the Bilbao Bizkaia Water Consortium with the votes in favour of the PNV, which holds the mayor of these municipalities, and the votes against EH Bildu and the municipal group Guzan de Bermeo. With this step, the Busturialdea Water Consortium, which manages the water in the natural area of Urdaibai, has been left to nothing, and opposition forces say that the management of the water that Europe sends is going in the opposite direction to the “sustainable and close”.

The municipal government of Bermeo has given several reasons to "integrate" water management in the Bilbao Bizkaia Water Consortium, but the main one is that it lacks sufficient financial resources to maintain the existing infrastructure. The Mayor of EAJ-PNV of Bermeo, Aritz Abaroa, has insisted that canning plants should invest in the management of water waste they generate, among other things, and has ensured that the Busturialdea Water Consortium "has no technical or economic capacity to do so."

Managing water in the hands of multinationals

Mayor of EH Bildu of EA, Iratxe Arriola, who has for years been president of the Busturialdea Water Consortium, has condemned the arguments of the Bermeo municipal government. In his opinion, in practice water management will remain in the hands of the “multinationals” and will bring the view of water as “business”: “Although Bilbao is public on the role of Bizkaia, in the management model it is governed by the same criteria as private companies”, says Arriola. Through a chain of subcontracting, he has denounced that multinationals such as Iberdrola, Acciona, Suez or Aqualia are going to take control of water and that "60% of the bill" will be for them.

According to Arriola, the Bilbao Bizkaia Water Consortium is “ever further away” from the local reality and the “regional scale”. Thus, the mayor of EA says that he has made decisions that are outside the organization’s objectives and that are “non-logical and unjustifiable commercial operations”.

Arriola has defended a sustainable public water management model, and has denied the lack of capacity, considering that the infrastructure changes can be made through the investments of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia. “We demand a non-profit public water management model that, from the socio-ecological point of view, respects the rights of citizens as a service of general interest, which combines with the sovereign generation of local energy.”

Price uncertainty

The Guzan popular platform has also been against the Bizkaia Water Consortium taking over water management. To this end, it has given three reasons: the decision to transfer municipal competence; the statutes of the Consortium are a “cover” for public money to be beyond the control of public institutions; and because it generates “concern” in the direction of water prices in the future.

Councillor Guzan Xabier Ortuzar explained that although in 2022 it is agreed not to increase the price of water by 5%, from 2023 onwards it cannot be ensured that another tax will be generated to finance the works and deal with the “water deficit” that climate change would entail in the Urdaibai Reserve: “It is clear that without water resources it will not be possible to build more people in the region,” says the representative of Guzan-. Why is there such interest in creating the need for hydraulic infrastructure? Is it not that with taxpayers’ money there is a desire to do works to turn the region into a new prey for the tourism business?”

Lately, the different models that exist in Euskal Herria regarding water management are being evidenced. For example, in Gipuzkoa, Zumarraga and Urretxu, the municipality of water has been discussed and a platform has been created to demand that this raw material, which is a public good, not be privatized. Now, this model clash has another trench in Bizkaia, in the villages surrounding the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve.