As part of Operation Gota D’Água, in which the Judicial Police (PJ) are investigating alleged fraud in the analysis of water for human consumption and wastewater at a laboratory in Mirandela, the Water and Waste Services Regulatory Authority (ERSAR) has already decided to suspend the awarding of quality prizes to the following companies.
Águas de Gondomar and the municipalities of Miranda do Douro, Armamar, São João da Pesqueira, Vila Nova de Foz Côa, Almeida, Mêda and Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, which used the laboratory investigated by the authorities.
The regulator, reports Público, has decided to suspend the delivery of the “seal of exemplary quality of water for human consumption” from 2023, and this suspension only covers clients of the Regional Laboratory of Trás-os-Montes (LRTM) who in October had been included in the list of 89 management entities with “exemplary quality” of water.
However, ERSAR stresses that the suspension of the award does not mean that the water in the municipalities covered is of poor quality, but rather that the award is based on an annual report on the activity of 227 entities that provide services in the supply sector, which would include data from 2022, when the LRTM was in operation, and could therefore be distorting the results.
The suspension, says the regulator, will be “reassessed as soon as there is further clarification in the context of the results of the ongoing operation and the responsibility determined by the criminal prosecution bodies”.
The PJ, it should be remembered, is investigating suspected “fraudulent activity” by the LRTM, with suspicions of crimes of “abuse of power, computer fraud, aggravated document forgery, criminal association, malfeasance, spreading disease and forging prescriptions”.