The decision is highly symbolic. The elected officials of the Metropolis of Lyon voted at the beginning of the week to “take over in public management” of the water services, now managed by Veolia, by 2023.
A strong political marker for the new ecological majority: in 1853, the first water concession in the world was granted by the capital of the Gauls to the General Water Company, which has since become … Veolia.
This return to direct management is not a first (a control agency had been re-established in Lyon in 1900) but the creation of Courly in 1969, ancestor of Greater Lyon and the Metropolis, had led to the return to a delegation of service. public (DSP) a few years later.
In the big cities, the trend was then clearly in favor of the private sector, in one of the few sectors spared by post-war nationalizations.
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Since the 90s, the rise of the theme of “common goods” (taken up by the president of the Métropole Bruno Bernard) has shaken the position of the mastodons of the sector.
Many metropolises, both left and right, have decided to bet on a public operator: Grenoble, Rennes, Brest, Montpellier, Rouen, Paris, Nice … We are far from the tidal wave but the share of the French population concerned has increased from 28% to 42% in twenty years (for 70% of the municipalities).
But should the Lyonnais expect a revolution? Prices, reduced rates, water quality … this is what could change from 2023.
Price: is the public cheaper?
Will the switch from private to public have an impact on the bill? A precaution from the start: the price depends on multiple variables, including the size of the municipality, proximity to sources or the scale of investments.
However, dependence on a single capturing field (90% of the supply comes from Crépieux-Charmy) and the necessary modernization of the network in the years to come are likely to play a greater role in the evolution of prices (upwards ) as the management mode.
What to expect from the latter, however? In the mid-2000s, at the beginning of the wave of remunicipalisation, the Boston Consulting Group had, at the request of the Professional Federation of Water Companies (FP2E), compared the prices of water in municipalities over 20,000 inhabitants of the Hexagon, according to the manager.
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At first glance, the difference is very clearly in favor of the public, whether for the distribution of the water itself or for the sanitation component: at the time, 3.63 euros per cubic meter on average in the event of public management, against 4.05 euros per cubic meter for DSP, more than 10% difference.
The figures are misleading, however. Delegations to the private sector more often have to manage surface water, the treatment of which costs significantly more than that of groundwater (this is often one of the reasons for delegation). When operating conditions are similar, the price differential falls between 5.5% and 9.5%.
If we add the taxes paid by private delegatees, which are as many resources for the public, the cost of water in the event of DSP is even lower, according to the cabinet. But this does not take into account the treatment of the officials mobilized to monitor the delegation contract and forgets that the taxes in question can slip into the pockets of the State, and not of the community in question …
In short, on the one hand, large private companies, operating throughout the national territory and even internationally, can achieve economies of scale (research and development, human resources, expertise, etc.); on the other hand, the public agencies do not have to bear head office costs or remunerate shareholders. One everywhere, ball in the center.
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Water quality and service: who manages the best?
Again, no rule in this area. The satisfaction rate for microbiological and physico-chemical tests is very high in both cases, with a slight advantage to the private sector for the former, to the public for the latter, according to Ifrap.
Clearer, the water losses on the network are higher at the state boards, up to some 3,000 liters of water per kilometer of pipe and per day, according to the study by the Boston Consulting Group. But this could be linked to the low number of delegations in small rural municipalities, where the networks are less dense.
Thus, in another field, the advantage of the private sector in terms of knowledge of the network melted during the 2010s, as large cities, with more resources, passed to the control (according to figures from the Observatory of public water and sanitation services).
The example of Paris
Failing to decide for the entire Hexagon, can we at least look at what happened in cities of a similar size to Lyon?
Delegated to several private companies since the 1980s, the production, distribution and reprocessing of water were municipalized in Paris in 2010. Ten years later, almost all of the opponents of the socialist town hall admit that the changeover to public administration is not ‘was not the predicted disaster. A report from the Regional Chamber of Accounts also hailed a successful transfer.
After an initial drop of 8%, prices have only risen by 4% since (excluding sanitation, managed at interdepartmental level). And the new municipal government has managed to remain profitable, despite a drop in consumption, which should make it possible to finance future investments.
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Water price: what do you pay?
The water tariff pays for the collection, treatment and distribution of drinking water (45%), wastewater treatment (37%) and taxes and fees (18%).
Among the latter, the VAT obviously goes to the State but the royalties are paid in large part to the water agencies, responsible for managing water (preservation, fight against pollution, modernization of the network, …) in a given watershed.
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No miracle however. According to the same regional chamber of accounts, cited by The world, the price differences between the capital and its suburbs, where there was no systematic re-municipalization, were reduced by two thirds between 2011 and 2018. The neighboring town halls were indeed able, in number, to renegotiate the delegations downwards, taking advantage of the scarecrow of a passage in control.
Problem for the Grand-Lyonnais: this has already been done between Saône and Rhône. The delegation negotiated in 1986 by Générale des Eaux for thirty years had made Lyon in the 2000s one of the cities in France where water was the most expensive. Gérard Collomb therefore imposed a 15% rebate in 2008 (without breaking the contract), before obtaining a further 20% price reduction during the renegotiation of the DSP in 2015.
Switching to state control offers above all the possibility of giving a “social” tone to the water policy: special tariffs for the poorest, infrequent water cuts in the event of unpaid bills, … With greater concern for the preservation of the resource, it was indeed the flagship argument of the President of the Metropolis in favor of his campaign promise.
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