Environment Commission approves 78 articles of the draft General Water Law for El Salvador

This Legislative Assembly release was published using machine translation.

In order to approve regulations that guarantee adequate access to water for the benefit of the Salvadoran population, the Commission on the Environment and Climate Change continued with the study of the preliminary draft of the General Water Law.

In this context, the articles referring to the National Water Resources Policy were unanimously approved, which presents a coherent and precise set of principles, objectives and guidelines, which should ensure the equitable and sustainable use of water, the maintenance and improvement of its quality.

It is established that the National Water Resources Policy will be updated at least every ten years, and will be reviewed at least every five. In the same way, it is determined that the National Water Plan must consider, for its elaboration, requirements of the environmental regulations and especially with the evaluations and the strategy, in accordance with the provisions of the Environmental Law.

The president of the commission, Deputy Martha Evelyn Batres (ARENA), acknowledged that the working session on Tuesday was beneficial by stating that "we have made progress in the approval of 78 core articles so that equitable access of the population to the vital liquid in quantity and quality, in line with the human right to water ”.

In the same context, Deputy Dina Argueta (FMLN) said that there is still a lack of articles that have to do with the economic regime, since there are sectors that do not want to pay for water and that must be regulated.

It should be noted that the Water Information System, access to information for users, research support, the Annual Report of the National Water Status, registry functions and the objectives for formulating the National Water Plan were also approved.