Section 2: Water and sanitation

Public water and wastewater services are financially managed as industrial and commercial services.

The investment section of the municipal budget may be voted with a surplus in order to allow for work to extend or improve services planned by the municipal council as part of a multi-year programme.

The system of charges that may be levied by communes, départements or regions for the occupation of their public domain by water supply and sewerage works is set by decree in the Conseil d’Etat.

When the delegated contract for a public water or wastewater service requires the operator to carry out asset renewal and major repairs, a provisional works programme is appended to the contract. This programme includes an estimate of expenditure. Each year, the delegatee must give an account of its execution in the report provided for in article L. 1411-3.

The public service delegation contract for water or sanitation requires the delegatee, firstly, to draw up a detailed inventory of the delegator’s assets at the end of the contract and, secondly, without prejudice to any other penalties provided for in the contract, to pay into the delegator’s drinking water or sanitation budget a sum corresponding to the amount of the works stipulated in the provisional programme mentioned in article L….

Municipalities and their public cooperation establishments exercising jurisdiction over drinking water or sanitation may also, as an accessory to this jurisdiction, within the framework of the same operation and in addition to carrying out works relating to drinking water distribution networks or collective sanitation, ensure the project management and maintenance of civil engineering infrastructures intended for the passage of electronic communications networks, including ducts and drawing chambers, subject to, when…