Novo marco legal do saneamento: universalização e desenvolvimento para o bem comum

Abstract

The present work has the scope to analyze the universalization of access to services that make up basic sanitation as a mandatory commandment arising from the changes that took place in Law No. /2020, known as the new legal framework for basic sanitation. Thus, the text evaluates this novel legislation that updated and modernized the new guidelines regarding basic sanitation services in Brazil, defining in the infraconstitutional scope the ownership of these services, as well as the form of their exercise when facing their regionalized provision. In this vein, the new legal framework for basic sanitation encourages the regionalized provision of services that compose it, instituting inter-federative models for both in the objective of achieving greater efficiency and economy of scale, with the establishment of reference standards at the national level through the Agency National Water and Basic Sanitation, ANA. Furthermore, alluding legislation emphasizes the establishment of partnerships between the Public Power and the private sector, breaking with the paradigm of delegating services to state entities without prior bidding, which was done through program contracts, making them closed from from then. From this perspective, the delegation of basic sanitation services can only be done with a previous bidding procedure, granting them under the terms of Law 8.987/1995 or Law 11.079/2004, if the Public Power understands, based on technical studies, not to be feasible to provide it directly. The new legal framework for basic sanitation, by improving and modernizing the legislation referring to the basic sanitation sector, has the primacy of providing legal instruments capable of making its universalization viable in Brazil, which has an alarming deficit of coverage in its territory, especially in the regions with the lowest Human Development Index and the highest Social Vulnerability Index. The universalization of basic sanitation is imperative, since it is a fundamental human right that is interrelated with the fundamental human rights to health, development and an ecologically balanced environment. Thus, the universal achievement of the fundamental human right to basic sanitation is essential for achieving human dignity