Urban Water Management and Cost Recovery Issues: Case Studies of Sivas and Fethiye in Turkey

Turkey has encountered environmental problems in the modern sense of the term comparatively late, but from 1970’s onwards, rapid urbanization has brought environmental problems to dangerous levels, particularly in water catchment areas and in urban and coastal settlements. Infrastructure investment mainly for pollution prevention purposes, i.e. sewerage and sewage treatment has fallen behind schedule due to lack of adequate planning and financing. Environmental pollution control by all means and at all costs is an unquestionable liability of us to the next generations. Even though this broad objective is technically possible to achieve under the current technological level of improvement, the financing, cost recovery and affordability of the environmental pollution control projects will be fundamental issues to tackle both in the short-and long-term, given the limited financial resources and disposable income of the population. The challenge is to ensure environmental pollution prevention in parallel with a financially sustainable approach. In this paper, the economic impact of having a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in two medium-sized towns in Turkey (Sivas located in the eastern part of Turkey discharging to Kizilirmak river flowing to Black Sea and Fethiye located in the western part of Turkey discharging to the Aegean Sea) with the objective of environmental pollution prevention is assessed by taking investment and operation costs, required tariff levels, affordability and willingness-to-pay of the users into account. While affordability and willingness-to-pay exist, major constraint stems from willingness-to charge.