In October 2009, ACRI and the Israeli Association for Consumer Protection succeeded in their joint efforts to prevent the Israel Water Authority from instituting differential water rates for different regions which would consequently lead to higher water costs in poorer areas.
In 2008, The Israel National Water Authority published a set of new guidelines including new water rates and new procedures for calculating these rates. According to the guidelines, the Authority would institute differential rates in different regions, which would be calculated according to the costs of provision of water services in each area, without taking into account the socio-economic status of the population living in those areas. The differential rates were designed ahead of a plan to privatize the local water corporations that provide this basic service, which are currently owned and operated by the local authorities. The plan was designed to make these corporations more cost-effective so that they could ultimately be passed on to private ownership.
ACRI and the Israeli Association for Consumer Protection advocated against these new guidelines, arguing that as a public institution, the National Water Authority is obligated to distribute this basic service on an equal basis without discrimination. A system of differential rates which employs cost of provision as its main determinant turns water into a commodity rather than a basic right. Furthermore, the calculation of water rates according to the costs of provision would consequently lead to higher rates for many of Israel’s poorer communities living in peripheral regions. This is because it is more expensive to provide water services in peripheral areas due to their distance and due to the high costs in collecting fees from lower income communities which have difficulties in paying their bills. These differential rates would ultimately create a vicious cycle in which residents would be unable to pay the higher water rates, therefore leading the services to be even more costly to the Water Corporations.
ACRI’s advocacy efforts succeeded when the National Water Authority announced it would not institute differential rates. In tandem to this advocacy, ACRI is working to advance a bill proposal that would enshrine the equal right to water in law. The proposed bill would require the Authority to adhere to the principle of non-discrimination and maintain one single rate, using surpluses from regions in which water services are less costly, to subsidize the regions which are more expensive.
