Regulatory framework
The National Drinking Water and Sanitary Sewage Commission is created, whose main function is the formulation of the objectives and strategies of the drinking water and sanitary sewage sector in order to promote the development of these services to the entire population.
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With the modernization and transformation of the Sector, new regulatory functions were attributed to it, and its Organic Law was reformed, through Law No. 275 “Law to Reform the Organic Law of INAA”, published in La Gaceta, Official Gazette No. 18 of the January 28, 1998, and its Regulation Decree No.25-98 published in the Gazette, Official Gazette No.70 April 17, 1998.
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The Special Law of Drinking Water and Sanitation Committees aims to establish the provisions for the organization, constitution, legalization and operation of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Committees existing in the country and those that are organized in accordance with this law. The Drinking Water and Sanitation Committees will be identified in the course of this Law by
its acronym "CAPS.
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Make known the objective and establishment of standards for the conservation and protection of water, in addition to regulating the granting of rights and uses or exploitation of the water resource and its assets.
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The Nicaraguan Company of Aqueducts and Sanitary Sewers is created, a state-owned commercial entity, with legal personality and its own assets, of indefinite duration and with full capacity to acquire rights and contract obligations and which from now on will be called the Company or simply ENACAL.
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Establish the Environmental Evaluation System with the administrative provisions that regulate permits, authorizations; certificates, endorsements, letters of no objection, issued by MARENA for the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources in accordance with the current economic and social growth of the country.
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The purpose of this Regulation is to establish the provisions regarding the regulation of Wastewater Discharge from domestic, industrial, commercial, agro-industrial and service activities to receiving bodies and sanitary sewage, by establishing maximum permissible limits or ranges of discharges. , all in accordance with the mandate of Law No. 217, General Law of the Environment and Natural Resources and its Regulations.
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Institutional Framework
The Nicaraguan Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers (INAA) is the Regulatory Entity for the provision of drinking water and sanitary sewage services in the country.
We are a Ministry of State that, within the scope of its competence, is the delegated body of the Executive Branch that fulfills its main functions of standardizing, regulating environmental quality, formulating, proposing and directing national environmental policies in coordination with respective sectoral Ministries in the use sustainable management of natural resources, manage the Environmental Assessment System, guaranteeing the incorporation of analysis in municipal and sectoral development plans and programs, control polluting activities and supervise the national registry of physical and chemical substances that affect or damage the environment, manage the country's National System of Protected Areas with their respective Buffer Zones, supervise compliance with the country's international agreements and commitments in the environmental area, coordinate support in the prevention and control of disasters, emergencies and environmental contingencies and in prevention of misdemeanors and crimes against the environment, formulate and propose content in environmental education programs in harmony with Mother Earth.
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The National Water Authority is the decentralized body of the Executive Branch in matters of water with its own legal status, administrative and financial autonomy. With normative, operational, regulatory and control and monitoring faculties, to exercise the management, handling and administration at the national level of water resources and drinking water and sanitation services, in accordance with the relevant Laws.
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The Nicaraguan Aqueduct and Sewage Company, ENACAL, is the public entity that must implement the water policy for human consumption and sanitary sewage, the efficient and rational use of underground and surface water sources - intended for the drinking water that will benefit to society as a whole, with priority given to the sectors least served by past governments.
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Nicaragua is a particularly privileged country in terms of water resources, with 38,668 m3 /capita/year (FAO-Aquastat, 2003), which places the country above the average for Central American countries. Despite this, contamination of surface and underground water resources has had a major impact on availability. That is why Nicaragua is considered to have an economic water shortage (International Water Management Institute, 2007), due, on the one hand, to the lack of financial resources to use and maintain water sources of adequate quality for human consumption, and on the other, governance issues for the comprehensive management of the resource.
Nicaragua
Waves
Links of interest:
The main source of supply for irrigation is groundwater and, to a lesser extent, surface water, with sugar cane being the crop that is most irrigated with surface water, using dams and irrigation channels for 55.2% of the total irrigated area in 1997. In the last decade, farmers themselves have built their own irrigation systems operating in such a way that the water distribution company (ENACAL) plays no role in this activity.