ENEG – National Meeting of Water and Sanitation Management Entities 2023, organized by APDA – Portuguese Water Distribution and Drainage Association, will take place from 27 to 30 November at the multipurpose pavilion in Gondomar. This year is dedicated to the theme “A cry for water!”.

Water management entities will have to be prepared for more attentive legislation and more scrupulous regulation in the face of new challenges in the sector, particularly extreme climate phenomena, a transition in water and energy sources, aging infrastructure and dealing with with increasingly demanding consumers. However, as a result of the good behavior of recent decades, water management continues not to be framed as a problem that takes time to be properly resolved in the country, where there is insistence on the wide angles of the successive problems of drought, occurrences of floods and sources of pollution, and the discussion of strategic plans and structural projects is left out. We accept that there is still a lot to be done on the supply side, but we forget about the funds needed for this purpose. And, on the demand side, we allow the value of water to be widely debated in terms of its essential public service, allowing it to override, not infrequently, the value of water as a water resource essential to life and strategic for the country, devaluing its economic value.

In the great ENEG 2023 debate, this issue will be discussed by some of the main faces in the sector, namely, what needs to be changed in the paradigm in which we live, so that water management becomes a priority assumed by everyone, whether at the nationally, or at the local scale of municipalities.

LIS-Water will participate as a speaker in the round table on the theme “The balance of current underfinancing in the sector – How, with whom and with what?”.

You can find out more information and register at: https://www.apda.pt/pt/evento/1099/eneg-2023-encontro-nacional-de-entidades-gestoras-de-agua-e-saneamento/