their Regional Program of Water Management, iv) pass additional regulations
for water drainage, and v) regulate the forms and modalities of cooperation
with local governments.
The extent of the reform in question in terms of regionalization of water
services, is even more important if we consider that the range of regional
powers has been additionally widened to include the discipline dictated by Law
Decree 152/95 and by the same Directive 2000/60/EC. Law Decree 152/99, in
compliance with the principle of administrative decentralization, has assigned
to Regional Boards substantial functions in the field of planning and
programming, as well as legislative powers in terms of full implementation of
the principles of both qualitative and quantitative protection of water resources.
From the other hand, the regional scale of the processes, dictated at a EU level
by the Directive 2000/60/EC, suggests that planning and programming
activities be fundamental steps both in terms of protection of the quality and of
the use of water.
Directive 2000/60/EC calls, in the first place, for a remarkable effort of
rationalization of the planning context and of the powers assigned to Regions,
an effort that is intended to support the setting up of hydrographic districts as
the final outcome of a path already started by Law 183/89 in a view to
framing again the entire field of soil protection and water management within
an institutional picture of “ordinary good management” likely to result in
additional opportunities of development and economic growth by means of
efficient models of public/private governance. From the other hand, it is just
the assignment of important powers of regulation of public water utilities to
the Regional Boards ( in a perspective of a sustainable management of this
resource), that suggests the central role these utilities are going to play also in
the working out of Hydrographic Basin Management Plans under art. 13 of the
same Directive 2000/60/EC.
In fact, in consideration of the fact that the Regions are assigned the task of
working out Water Protection Plans (and that these latter are nothing more
than a portion of the Basin Plans under Law 183/89), one can readily assume
that the Regions will play not only a crucial role of coordination of the
activities carried out by subjects operating at a sub-regional level (Basin
Authority, ATOs), but also will be asked to make for the integration of the
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