Two years ago, with the country heading into a period marked by drought, almost 30% of the total water that reached the distribution system was not billed, which means that it was lost at some distribution point and never reached its destination. final destination, or that was never accounted for. According to Jornal de Notícias, the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) estimates that these losses translate into a loss of 264 million euros.
total, 236 million m3 of water were lost — practically the same value as in 2019. Of this amount, 73.4% translates into real losses, which is the water that was lost through the pipelines during the process, 15.5% refers to measurement errors and 11.9% to authorized unbilled consumption — here comes the irrigation that the municipalities do.
The hydrographic regions of the Minho and Lima and the Douro They are the ones with the highest volume of non-revenue water, with 38%. Shortly after, the Guadiana hydrographic region appears, with 37% of the losses.
To the same newspaper, the Ministry of the Environment explained that there are two points of intervention to be pointed out. One referring to “service efficiencyreducing real losses”, and another on “measurement systemsreducing measurement errors, as well as increasing the practice of billing all authorized consumption”.
Source: Observadora
