Alocação de custos e a cobrança pelo uso da água no Estado do Ceará

Abstract

This study proposes the use of cost sharing as an evaluation criterion for water pricing in order to discuss how to allocate the resources collected by charging for the use of raw water between basins. It was observed that the amount collected by charging for water in Ceara state only pays for the cost of operation, management and maintenance of the water infrastructure. With cost sharing by the method of Separable Costs‑Benefits Remaining, the costs of deployment and supervision of water works can also be funded by charging for the use of raw water and allocated to the watershed that benefits most from the installed infrastructure. The costs of the Eixão and Castanhão reservoir were apportioned between the basin of the Jaguaribe and Metropolitan as a way to enter the costs of water transference into the pricing model and generate equity to the management system. It was found that the Metropolitan basin gets the largest remaining benefits (56.9% of net benefit) showing the ability of this basin to subsidize the implementation of a water infrastructure. Based on the results, we emphasize the need to develop pricing policies that incorporate the assessment of benefits and promote economic efficiency and the equitable allocation of the water infrastructure deployment costs.