Regionalização e universalização dos serviços de água e esgoto: uma análise crítica a partir da realidade baiana

Abstract

Access to safe drinking water and sanitation services constitutes an essential human right and a foundation for health and social development. In Brazil, the sanitation regulatory framework was consolidated with Law No. 11,445/2007 and later amended by Law No. 14,026/2020, which expanded private sector participation and encouraged regionalization as a strategy to address structural inequalities. This study aimed to analyze the political, economic-financial, and social aspects of the regionalized arrangement for the provision of water supply and sanitation services in the state of Bahia, as well as the prospects for service universalization. The methodology involved a characterization of the study area from a socioeconomic perspective and through basic sanitation indicators capable of outlining the political, economic financial, and social profiles of the state’s microregions, based on data provided by Sinisa and IBGE. The results show that regionalization is structured within a context of strong territorial, socioeconomic, and fiscal heterogeneity, in which the Salvador Metropolitan Region concentrates population, income, and infrastructure, while a large portion of the state territory consists of rural, dispersed microregions with low administrative capacity. The analysis of operational indicators revealed limited and uneven progress, with greater advances in water supply than in sanitation. High distribution losses, intermittent service, and low effectiveness of wastewater treatment persist. Although the Regional Basic Sanitation Plans are aligned with the current legal framework and present standardized goals and indicators, their practical implementation has proven to be incipient. It is concluded that, despite a formally robust institutional design, the effectiveness of sanitation regionalization in Bahia is contingent upon increased investment, strengthened execution capacity and interinstitutional coordination, as well as improvements in governance, transparency, and redistributive induction among microregions. The study’s limitations—related to reliance on secondary data, the scarcity of systematized governance documents, and the absence of interviews with key stakeholders— highlight the need for future research to longitudinally monitor plan implementation, deepen analyses of rural sanitation, and assess the role of regulatory bodies in promoting equity and service universalization.