REGIONALIZATION INCREASING ACCESS TO WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION IN RURAL ROMANIA

The topic of increasing the access to water supply and sanitation infrastructure is of high importance in political and scientific endeavours dedicated to sustainable development worldwide. For a sustainable rural development and a more effective environmental protection, in Romania there are still problems and efforts of investment to be made in securing the rural population access to public utilities of water supply and sewerage sanitation. This is an issue since the water supply and sanitation networks are not covering all the areas but also due to the low rural acknowledgement and affordability of the public WSS services. However, in the last decade after the access of Romania to the European Union, to implement the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) the water sector has seen important reforms and development. Perhaps the most efficient and pro-active feature was the process of regionalization of WSS utilities, so the paper analyses some of the main outcomes and developments in the recent process of regionalization and consolidation of the water and wastewater networks and services, focusing on the objectives, challenges and outlooks for increasing the connection to WSS in the rural Romania.