Solid waste disposal service regulation in Latvia

Abstract

In order to implement and manage a centralized waste management system in Latvia in the first waste management planning period  2006  - 2012, all territory was divided into ten waste management regions (WMR), and each one has their own regional sanitary landfill. In the common waste management system only, municipal waste disposal service is a public service, therefore all landfill’s operators are public service providers.

The Public Utilities Commission (Regulator) is institutionally and functionally independent, autonomous body governed by public law which carries out regulation of public services in the five sectors, incl. waste management, in accordance with the law “On Regulators of Public Utilities” and special legal acts of the regulated sectors. The public service provider for the provision of solid waste disposal service at a landfill for solid waste shall calculate tariff in accordance with the Methodology for the Calculation of Solid Waste Disposal Service Tariff.

To evaluate the comparability of the accumulated and technical indicators within the merchant supervision, the Regulator elaborated a benchmarking for comparing the costs, technical and social parameters included in the waste disposal service tariff. The benchmarking for waste disposal service consists from four steps: General characteristics of the regulated service and WMR; Direct production costs and parameters; Other operating costs and parameters, and Comparison and monitoring.

In this study only first step is analyzed, that include the characteristics of the infrastructure used by the merchant, information on the essential differences in the provision of the regulated service among the merchants, which make an influence of the tariff formation costs and revenue from recovery and recycling materials.