Importance of regional sanitation management: the paradigm of the State of Santa Catarina in the use of cross-subsidization

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the importance of cross-subsidization for the management of sanitation services and the implementation of related public policies, allowed by the regional administration. It is a model - mostly applied in Brazil - that is threatened by privatization and municipalization of surplus systems, as well as by the lack of a legislative perception for a review of the ownership, which in Brazil is deferred to the municipalities as a general rule (the exception of metropolitan regions and urban agglomerates is still unregulated). Methodological research of qualitative approach, socio-critical paradigm and case study, which goes through the international scenario with supports from authors such as Bel (2019), Borja-Vega and Kloeve (2018), Helm (2019), and sustained by South American paradigms presented by Bonifaz Fernandez and Montoya (2013), Casa (2013), and Ceppi (2014), in addition to national ones such as Paludo and Borba (2014), Borja (2014), Cruz and Ramos (2016), Souza and Costa (2016) and Brown et al. (2016). In conclusion the bankruptcy of the solidarity model of subsidy between cities is already a Brazilian reality, especially in the State of Santa Catarina (Brazil), and that local examples of privatization have not evidenced differential success, demanding a strategic repositioning of the same so that the universality of access to sanitation services, with tariff modicity, becomes a tangible reality.