The challenge of Brazilian federalism in the basic sanitation

Abstract The Article 23 of the Federal Constitution establishes the competences shared by the three federated entities, among which is sanitation, a sector that constitutes a challenge to make deliveries, for different reasons. In accordance with Law No. 11,445/2007, sanitation is structured based on a set of services associated with infrastructure and operating facilities. Therefore, it is a service complex that integrates households with collective networks, which have high maintenance costs. At the federal level, sanitation actions are currently dispersed in a set of institutions that operate in different spatial areas, according to specific criteria and mandates. In basic sanitation, the financial autonomy and technical capacity of the municipalities are still insufficient to cooperate with the central government, which makes them technically and financially dependent on the Union. Thus, the purpose of this article is to analyze the complex sanitation agreement, at a federal accountability, and to indicate what reflections this architecture has, especially for the municipalities. For this, a literature review was carried out, as well as official documents and databases of the agencies responsible for the sector, within the scope of the Federal Government, and, in addition, the legislation that regulates basic sanitation was analyzed. This set of resources made possible some findings: a) persistence of a pattern of inequality that occurs vertically, compared to the largest urban centers; b) perpetuation of the sentence by the inspection and control agencies, in view of the technical and institutional weakness, particulary in the smaller cities; c) local managers are refractory to the construction of such systems in view of their cost, which makes them almost incompatible with the finances of the smallest municipalities. These are some aspects that are found in the federal disposition of the sanitation sector, which implies that a considerable part of the country’s population does not have access to this service, especially in the smaller cities.