Community-owned rural water supplies in Galicia (Spain): supporting role in the groundwater self-management

Abstract

The community-owned rural water supplies in the rural areas of Galicia developed spontaneously in response to the historical shortcomings of local administrations, which are a clear example of commons management strategies. They have developed a water self-management model integrated into a complex network of actors. More than one-quarter of the total population rely on these systems. However, a large part of supplied water does not comply with the sanitary standards due to deficiencies in the system’s design, operation, and maintenance and the water catchment protection. Furthermore, the owners face difficulties complying with basic legal requirements due to the complexity of the regulatory framework and the lack of training of the water board members. COXAPO (‘Comunidad Xeral de Augas de Galicia’), an association of 150 community-owned water supplies, advises, trains, and supports the water boards for the legal, administrative, economic, and technical systems management. As a result, it gets the systems legally compliant concerning the institutional management and quality of supplied water. The success of this network governance recommends a role to the administration in promoting the networking of water boards by supporting the existing water supply associations and encouraging their constitution or provisioning equivalent services in regions where they do not exist.