Management of land and water areas
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
I call for approval of the proposal and rejection of the motions 1 as water issues are a municipal responsibility and the state should not pay maintenance debts 1. S considers that water supply is a shared responsibility and advocates for state support, a fairer financing system, investigation of water-saving measures, as well as stricter criteria for national interests 2. KD considers that the state should offer credit guarantees, longer planning horizons, and review of the water and sewage operations 3. SD emphasizes that water is a critical resource, that the maintenance debt is large, and that national coordination, extensive investments in security, and smaller, dispersed units are needed 4. V considers that the exploitation of farmland is a concern and wants national steering measures to reduce this 5.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Lars Beckman (M)
Mr. Speaker! One wakes up in the morning. One is to shower. One is to drink a cup of coffee of a well-known coffee brand from Gävle. One is to brush one's teeth. And one expects that the water will come out of the tap and that the wastewater will be taken care of. That is what, Mr. Speaker, this committee report is about.
I would like to begin by moving for the approval of the proposal in the committee report and the rejection of the motions.
Mr. Speaker! Water and sewage are a municipal responsibility, and here, unfortunately, large maintenance debts have built up in the municipalities. The voters have likely demanded sports halls instead of a functioning water network, and the municipalities have simply been allowed to build up a large maintenance debt. The consequences of that can be seen when the water does not come in the morning when one is going to drink their morning coffee, and unfortunately, it has become more and more common for the media to report on water leaks.
Mr. Speaker! I do not rule out that the state must take greater responsibility for the supervision and control of how the municipalities handle this issue. This was also pointed out by the Swedish National Audit Office recently, when they had audited the VA issue.
Mr. Speaker! The consequences of a poorly managed water network could be seen by the people of Gävle when there was heavy rain. There are reports that it could cost the taxpayers in Gävle over 1 billion.
Was it then unknown that the water network in Gävle municipality had not been maintained? No, both residents and companies as well as the County Administrative Board had pointed out the deficiencies to Gävle municipality, but the municipality simply failed to rectify them. Let Gävle, therefore, be the deterrent example of how a municipality should not act.
Another issue that is causing friction in the country is the municipalities' mandatory connections of households to the municipal water and sewage network. Despite the fact that there are functioning sewage systems at the properties, they are being mandatorily connected to the municipality's network.
We see, for example, how Sandviken Municipality acts. The municipality constantly "flushes" its sewage network, and "flushing" means that they pump out unfiltered sewage water into Storsjön. The newspaper Arbetarbladet has written extensively about this. In that situation, when Sandviken does not have a functioning municipal water and sewage network, the municipality shall compulsorily connect 250–300 properties to it.
It is clear that the residents become fly-furious, or very upset, when they have a water and sewage network that they know does not work and a private sewage system that they know works and yet are still to be compulsorily connected. The consequence for the residents in Sandviken is therefore a worse environment.
There is also a preparedness aspect to the issue. We can see how Russia has acted in Ukraine – they have attacked the water networks. Society thus becomes more vulnerable when households are forcibly connected to water networks. It is incredibly difficult to understand why the politicians in Sandviken are doing what they are doing.
Mr. Speaker! We have noted this in the Riksdag in previous announcements, and the question of how to act now lies with the government. We have changed the legislation, which means that municipalities no longer need to compulsorily connect properties.
Mr. Speaker! There are those who think that the state should pay the municipalities' maintenance debt in the water and sewage network, but that is something we Moderates are deeply critical of. We have municipal self-government, and we have legislation that allows the municipalities to achieve full cost recovery on their water and sewage fee. Furthermore, they are allowed to structure the fee as they wish.
If a municipality has not prioritized the water network sufficiently, the voters can resolve that issue in the next election. It is not reasonable that the tax money that is now needed for defense should go to municipalities that mismanage their municipal water facilities.
Mr. Speaker! I therefore move for approval of the proposal in the committee report and rejection of the motions.
Denis Begic (S)
Mr. Speaker! I listened to Lars Beckman, and initially I thought that those watching at home and those sitting in the stands would probably believe that we in some way have the same script. I just don't say it exactly the same way as Beckman.
People out there listening to what we are talking about might think: What are they talking about? Water and land and other things feel obvious in some way. You go to the tap and lift the handle. Then clean water comes out, and you drink. Or you go into the shower. It is clear that then clean water comes out. But, Mr. Speaker, if we do not take our responsibility, if we do not safeguard our water sources and our water supply, there is a risk that one day we lift the handle and nothing happens. Nor does it happen in the shower – or if it does, something brown and disgusting comes out.
That is why we must act while we still have the opportunity. What we are discussing here today concerns our common foundation: access to clean water.
Water is not something we can take for granted. Svenskt Vatten has provided a figure: By 2040, we must invest between 500 and 800 billion in water and sewage. It is about renewing and strengthening our water and sewage infrastructure for public health, climate preparedness, and societal development.
If we do not act now, we face increased water leakage, a shortage of drinking water, and more pollution in our watercourses. It is completely obvious that no municipality will manage this alone.
We Social Democrats believe, in contrast to the Moderates, that this is a collective responsibility. It is about justice, about solidarity and about collective responsibility.
Mr. Speaker! We see clearly that many smaller municipalities risk not meeting future requirements for water. Linköping University shows that more cooperation and more state support are needed. That is why we proposed a review of the Act on Public Water Services so that the municipalities get better conditions.
We also propose that the state should take greater responsibility for supporting the municipalities' investments in water and sewage systems by developing a more flexible and fairer financing system.
We also want to investigate how water-saving measures can be covered by, for example, the rot deduction.
We want to push for eco-design within the EU so that new taps, toilets, and showers become more water-efficient.
We want to introduce green roofs that both manage stormwater more intelligently and strengthen biodiversity.
These are concrete measures. Clean water is a right, but it also requires active politics.
Mr. Speaker! We must also talk about how we use and protect our land.
The system for national interests was created to protect the most unique and valuable. But today, it no longer functions as intended. Boverket's review shows that four out of five agencies themselves assess that their national interest claims do not fully meet the criteria.
Therefore, we believe that the number of national interests must be reduced. The criteria must be tightened, and legitimacy must be restored. We need a system that protects natural and cultural values but at the same time makes it possible to build the housing, schools, and healthcare facilities of the future, as well as climate-adapted infrastructure.
It is entirely possible to do both. It only requires courage, priorities and responsibility.
Mr. Speaker! We can also not turn a blind eye to what is happening in Europe. The EU is currently driving several important projects. The strategy for water resilience to manage drought, floods, and water shortages is on its way. The new soil strategy shall ensure that Europe's soils are healthy and productive. We Social Democrats believe that Sweden must also take responsibility in these issues. We cannot stand still while our neighbors prepare their societies for the future. We shall also be an example.
During our time in government, we implemented several initiatives. We invested in improved wastewater treatment in Sweden, including through specific support for advanced pharmaceutical treatment in municipal treatment plants. We strengthened the work against eutrophication in our lakes, watercourses, and coastal areas through targeted measures and investments. We also invested in research, which is an important part. These research efforts took place within the framework of Sweden's environmental policy.
These were concrete measures that made a difference, but the work cannot stop here. It must continue, and it must be intensified.
What we are discussing, Mr. Speaker, is not a small matter. It is about what kind of Sweden we are to leave behind. Both Lars and I shall leave a Sweden to future generations that can actually drink water, shower when they need to, and boil coffee. We shall also leave land and soil that is not destroyed to future generations. When it comes to this, we in this assembly need to make decisions on responsible measures.
I naturally stand behind all our reservations, but I choose to only move for approval of reservation 1.
Larry Söder (KD)
Mr. Speaker! One of the biggest challenges that citizens and municipalities will face in the future is water, including in the form of increased water flows during certain periods. Where today construction is accounted for, significantly higher water flows than today must be managed. At the same time, authorities choose to demolish small-scale hydropower plants and remove dams that have sometimes existed for over 100 years. To me, it is absurd.
This creates an even greater flow of water, and the water is not in the same place as before. Farmers cannot utilize the water that previously existed. It will create problems further downstream.
When it comes to water, the shore protection is a major obstacle for many municipalities to continue developing and to be able to build in attractive areas. The best thing for Sweden would be to let the municipalities have greater discretion over the shore protection regarding where it should be and to what extent it is needed. It would increase the possibilities to be flexible in the development of their own municipality.
Water and wastewater will become a major problem in the future, with the increased requirements for wastewater treatment and the lack of reinvestment that has existed for many years. Many of our water and wastewater pipes are 70–80 years old and have served their lifespan, but many municipalities have no plan for how to reinvest.
A regional analysis conducted by WSP shows that there are significant differences between different types of municipalities regarding the magnitude of the challenges they face in the water and wastewater area. Rural municipalities with small populations tend, on average, to have somewhat poorer quality and functionality within the water and wastewater system. This may be due to a combination of varying financing conditions, longer pipe infrastructure per user, geographical conditions, and a higher average age of the water and wastewater infrastructure in general.
At the same time, users' ability to pay due to lower income levels is often lower in these municipalities compared to larger cities and metropolitan areas. Consequently, it becomes even more palpable for the residents if the municipal politicians raise the water and sewage fee to finance necessary maintenance and reinvestments. The temptation then becomes greater for politicians and decision-makers to push the costs forward – which they have done – and live on the hope that the system will hold for one more mandate period before they need to do anything. On the other hand, some experts argue that today's municipal residents do not want to pay for something that future generations will benefit from when they have already paid for today's water and sewage network. There thus seems to be a discrepancy between the demand for quality in water and sewage services on one hand and the willingness to actually pay for it on the other.
Whether we want it or not, I mean that this discussion must be conducted at a national level. This also applies to how the state can promote the municipalities taking the responsibility they have. The responsibility lies at the municipal level, however, it cannot be handled solely at the municipal level.
We heard that the Social Democrats have also reflected quite a bit on this. We Christian Democrats have been quite clear that we think it is a problem that must be discussed more. We welcome that. We have, however, been quite clear with our proposal to try to initiate a discussion.
We have proposed that the state should actually offer credit guarantees, that is to say the collateral, on loans of up to 20 years for municipal water and sewage operations in order to cover the maintenance debts that exist. In that case, it shall be the state's responsibility to subsidize 0.5 percentage points of the interest cost for the loans the credit guarantee covers.
We also want that there should be a longer planning horizon for municipalities. Today, one has the possibility to fund for three years. We think that one should be able to fund for, for example, eight years ahead in order to be able to plan significantly better and more systematically in the municipalities.
We also think that the Swedish National Audit Office should be given a mandate to perform audit reviews of the municipalities' water and sewage companies, or water and sewage activities, in order to increase transparency and ensure that the water and sewage fees we have in Sweden are efficient and follow the cost principle and other KPI developments. We can see that many fees in the municipalities do not follow the KPI development but are significantly higher. This also applies to the water and sewage fee, and we would think it would be quite good if someone in one way or another performed an audit of this. The Swedish National Audit Office controls authorities, and we think that works well in the Riksdag. We believe that it would be a way to handle this for the municipalities as well.
With that said, I would like to vote in favor of the committee's proposal.
Mats Hellhoff (SD)
Mr. Speaker! I naturally stand behind all our reservations, but I am pleased to move for approval of reservation 18.
It is no secret that Sweden is not self-sufficient in food except when it comes to a few items: grain, carrots and sugar. When it comes to increasing our self-sufficiency, agriculture and farming thus come into focus. There is truly no lack of incentives to protect and even increase the area of agricultural land when the security situation in Europe looks the way it does.
I mean that it is very important to protect agricultural land from being exploited for, for example, so-called solar cell parks, to the greatest extent possible. Just as with wind power installations, this is far from being any parks, but rather large industrial facilities for the production of energy.
This was about the land. Now to something completely different: water. Water is a dangerous poison which surrounds the Visby diocese, wrote Falstaff Fakir in his well-known book En hvar sin egen professor or Allt menskligt vetande i sammandrag. You have surely read it – or?
Jokes aside, Mr. Speaker! Now, it is not only Visby stift that is surrounded or affected by water. In large part, everything in our existence is more or less dependent on water. Water is by far our most important resource. And we are quite lucky in our country, which for the most part always has access to drinking water. But we take our water for granted to an all too great extent, I would like to assert.
In the EU's Water Framework Directive, one can read in the introduction: "Water is not just any commodity, but a heritage that must be protected, defended, and treated as such."
Sweden's water infrastructure consists of 20,000 kilometers of pipes. It is as long as five laps around the earth. Much of the pipe network was built in the 1960s and 1970s and has therefore been in use for more than half a century. In the country's municipalities, there is a great need for maintenance. In many places, there is a maintenance debt, and due to the regulatory framework, it is difficult to finance renovation and maintenance. We have figures for appalling sums here – up to 800 billion. The rules for financing are currently being prepared in the Government Offices. We truly look forward to the rules for this being changed for the better for the municipalities.
The responsibility for our water services lies in very many hands. It is the municipality, the County Administrative Board, the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, the Geological Survey of Sweden, SMHI, the Swedish Food Agency, MSB, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Board of Agriculture, the Swedish Forest Agency and Boverket – yes, you can hear it yourselves.
In order to ensure the best possible cooperation and coordination between all these agencies, we believe that a national coordination function is needed. Admittedly, the Va-beredskapsutredningen advocates for better cooperation between the different actors, but we believe that the investigation does not go far enough there. Appeals are not enough.
Another thing that cannot be overlooked is the security of our water facilities. We have seen that simply by breaking a padlock, one can stop the water distribution to a community for several days, and we can only speculate on how many facilities with such lacking security there are in the country. Upgrading the security for all facilities in Sweden is a comprehensive challenge, and it will require extensive investments for which there is no planning yet.
In Ukraine, we see how Russia targets different parts of the infrastructure. Much is directed towards electricity distribution but also towards water and sewage networks. So far, we see how they manage to restore the electricity distribution quite soon and also how they can distribute drinking water to the communities quite soon. But when the sewage network is damaged or destroyed, most people move, or they are evacuated.
In light of how the war is being conducted, one must ask: How well-considered is it, really, to centralize different activities? When it comes to healthcare, for example, it is an explicit advantage to have smaller, dispersed units compared to having large central facilities. The same should also apply to water and sewage.
Kajsa Fredholm (V)
Mr. Speaker! The proportion of arable land continues to decrease in Sweden, and at the same time, the exploitation of agricultural land is increasing. By exploitation of agricultural land, it is meant to build on the land or use it in a way that makes it impossible to cultivate there again.
The primary reason why farmland is disappearing is that the land is no longer cultivated and therefore grows over. At the same time as this is happening, Sweden has a great need to strengthen its self-sufficiency of food. Furthermore, the climate crisis means that cultivable land is weakening globally, which will entail an increased responsibility for Sweden to contribute to the global supply of food.
Mr. Speaker! The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency assesses that it is not possible to achieve the environmental quality goal A rich cultivated landscape with currently decided or planned management measures. The conditions for long-term preserving the agricultural land's production capacity are assessed as insufficient. Furthermore, the condition for many of the cultivated landscape's species and nature types is poor or unfavorable. Second only to the forest, the most red-listed species are found in precisely the cultivated landscape.
That is why it is also necessary to favor more farming methods that contribute to a tradition that strengthens biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. A more mosaic-like landscape with different forms of natural grazing and reduced use of pesticides is needed.
We in Vänsterpartiet consider that the high rate of exploitation of fertile farmland, not least in southern Sweden, is very concerning and incompatible with a long-term sustainable food supply. Even the Inquiry into a new food preparedness states in its report Food Preparedness for a New Era that agricultural land should be better protected.
New national steering measures are needed to reduce the exploitation of agricultural land in the municipalities. The Government should therefore counteract the exploitation of arable land and submit a proposal for a national objective for the preservation of fertile arable land, which is the content of reservation 5, which I move for approval of.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.