Besides OSM water services in the province are provided by the three municipalities of Maipú, Luján and Tupungatu and 174 small not-for-profit operators.
In 1993, in response to poor service quality, the provincial Parliament passed a law (Law 6044) with the objective of restructuring the province’s water and sanitation sector, introducing a private concession for the provincially owned company Obras Sanitarias de Mendoza (OSM) and creating a regulatory agency for the sector.
In the same year the provincial government also first submitted a draft law to Parliament to pursue a policy of installing water meters and volumetric billing.
Meters were thus not read and fell into disrepair, while bills continued to be issued on a lump sum basis independently of consumption.
[1] According to Susana Yelich, director of the consumer group Prodelco, service provision in 2004 was much better than at the time when OSM had been publicly managed.
At the beginning of 2008, the provincial government announced that it is interested in increasing its control of OSM, of which it owns 20%, buying another 20% from Saur International.
Economic regulation is the responsibility of a regulatory agency, the Ente Provincial de Aguas y Saneamiento (EPAS), under the Ministry of Public Works and Environment.
Annual fees from the concession were intended to finance the construction of the Potrerillos levee on the Mendoza River, the largest hydraulic infrastructure ever built in the Province.
On the other hand, OSM has not paid taxes, the concession fee and fines imposed on it by the regulator for not having met its investment obligations, equivalent to 13 million Pesos as well.
The newspaper Uno was much less critical, which may be explained by the fact that its owner, Daniel Vila, was also a co-owner of OSM through Inversores del Aconcagua.
(2004) "La privatisation des services publics argentins au coeur d'enjeux géopolitiques, conflits et rivalités territoriales.