SRL “Apă-Canal Ungheni” has responded publicly to our article about the tariff of 40.01 lei per cubic metre: five “clarifications”, published on Thursday, 16 July, in a comment under the newsroom’s Facebook post, “for the correct and complete information of consumers”. Checked against the documents, the clarifications disprove no figure in the article: two repeat figures the article had already published, a single one contests one figure — by 0.3 percentage points, through a calculation on a different basis — and the rest bring new information, which we publish below. The main findings remain without comment.
The 14 July article showed, on ANRE’s substantiation documents, that electricity — the explanation given in public for the level of the tariff — accounts for 9.0% of the operator’s recognised cost and is falling, while staff costs make up 77.2%. Also there: the operator’s own request of 28 May for an increase of 4.52 lei/m³, followed on 26 June by the assurance, given to the Municipal Council, that the tariffs could be maintained.
What the clarifications confirm
The operator’s first point:
The total amount of 40.01 lei/m³ applies only to consumers who receive both services. SRL “Apă-Canal Ungheni”, clarifications published on Facebook, 16 July 2026
True — and so said the article, from its first section: drinking water 25.17 lei/m³, sewerage 14.84, and of households’ water volume “only 62% is also billed for sewerage”; those not connected to the sewer network pay only the water increase, of 1.63 lei per cubic metre. What our headline did compress was the qualifier: “40.01 lei per cubic metre” is the combined price, water plus sewerage. For roughly two thirds of household consumers — those connected to both networks — it is exactly the price paid.
The second point — that a consumer connected to water only pays 8.15 lei more at a consumption of 5 m³ — is correct: 1.63 lei multiplied by 5. The article gave the other scenario, water plus sewerage: 1.76 lei multiplied by 5, i.e. 8.80 lei a month, plus the table for 3, 8 and 10 m³. Both calculations stand; what differs is the household they are made for. In both points, the operator’s clarifications choose the scenario with the smallest impact — the consumer connected to water only.
What we learn that is new: the network and the people
According to the operator, besides pumping waste water over 13 kilometres to the treatment plant, the company maintains “another 9 waste-water repumping stations” on the territory of the municipality — a detail that appears neither in the development plan approved by the Municipal Council in June, nor on the operator’s “Technological process” page.
The infrastructure figures differ, in fact, from one public channel of the operator to another. The 2026–2028 development plan describes 157 km of network and 9 pressure-boosting stations. The present comment speaks of “more than 157 km of water networks and 80.3 km of sewerage networks”. And the undated “Technological process” page on acu.md describes a network of about 139.1 km, 66.5 km of gravity sewerage, 11 hydrophore-type pumping stations — and a single waste-water pumping station, from which the water leaves under pressure towards Valea Mare. Which of these figures describes today’s network is one of the questions sent to the operator.
Also new is the portrait of the team:
So that Ungheni residents have water at the tap non-stop (24/24), the public service is provided through the daily effort of roughly 140 employees. SRL “Apă-Canal Ungheni”, clarifications published on Facebook, 16 July 2026
Of the roughly 140, according to the same breakdown: 44 work in shifts, at the stations and at the dispatch office, including at night and at weekends; 42 physically maintain the networks; the rest — about 54 people, by arithmetic — are “technical support and administrative staff”.
The history of the electricity price is new too: in 2025, the operator bought power at three prices — 2.84 lei/kWh in January, 4.68 lei from February to July, 4.00 lei for the rest of the year — and for 2026 ANRE took into account a stabilised price of 4.00 lei/kWh.
The disputed figure: 0.3 percentage points
The only figure in the article that the clarifications contest is the decrease in electricity costs: the operator says −19.1%, the article said −19.4%.
The article’s figure is ANRE’s: the substantiation sheet records a decrease of 909.2 thousand lei against the cost recognised for 2025 — that is, 19.4%. The operator, by the explanation in its comment, measures the decrease against its actual 2025 purchase costs, at the three prices above — hence 19.1%. Different bases of calculation, the same direction.
The decrease is not just a matter of the market, though: according to the reasoning note, ANRE recalculated energy consumption at the admitted losses and at 2026 prices — the agency recognises in the tariff water losses of at most 17%, below the real ones, of 20.9%. However it is counted — 19.1% or 19.4% — the decrease confirms the article’s finding: electricity is not what pushes the tariff up.
The wages, put into figures
Here the operator has a correct clarification, which we take on board: the article called “wages” what in the ANRE sheet are “staff costs” — the wage fund plus, compulsorily, the 24% social insurance contribution paid by the employer. Arithmetically, about a fifth of that money goes to the social insurance budget, not into the wages themselves. The clarification does not move the conclusion, however: the cost of labour remains 77.2% of everything you pay per cubic metre. And the article said explicitly: “That does not mean the wages are unjustified.”
The operator’s new data allow, in turn, a calculation the public documents did not allow until now. The staff costs recognised by ANRE for 2026 — 32.479,1 thousand lei — divided by roughly 140 employees give an average cost of about 19,300 lei a month per employee; without the 24% contribution, the equivalent of an average gross salary of about 15,600 lei. It is an order of magnitude, not a payroll: staff costs may also include bonuses or other payments, and the ANRE figure is a cost recognised in the tariff, not money necessarily paid out.
The official benchmarks, for comparison: in the first quarter of 2026, the average gross salary across the economy was 15,987 lei, and in the branch of water collection, treatment and distribution — 13,075 lei (NBS, units with four or more employees). In Ungheni raion, across all activities, the average was 11,781 lei in the third quarter of 2025, the latest published. The average gross-salary equivalent that results at Apă-Canal Ungheni — about 15,600 lei — thus sits above the national average of the water branch and roughly at the level of the economy-wide average. What the average salary actually paid in the company is — one of the questions sent to the operator.
From the staff costs the operator requested for 2026, ANRE excluded 480.8 thousand lei; the rest it recognised.
The findings the clarifications do not touch
The operator’s comment does not refer to any of the article’s documented findings:
- its own request of 28 May to ANRE — an increase of 4.52 lei/m³ —, followed, on 26 June, by the assurance given to the Municipal Council that the tariffs could be maintained “without affecting the economic and financial balance”;
- the treatment plant running at less than half its design capacity — about 6 thousand of 12.7 thousand m³ a day — the structural cause of a high tariff;
- the water losses in the network: 20.9% in 2025, of which ANRE recognises only 17% in the tariff;
- the 714.6 thousand lei excluded by ANRE — the 2025 profit, “used by the operator for purposes other than those provided by the methodology”.
On these subjects — from the destination of the 714.6 thousand lei to the average salary actually paid and to energy consumption broken down by station — the newsroom has sent the operator eight questions in writing.
The displayed price, three days after the increase
The 14 July article found that, on the very day it entered into force, neither ANRE’s tariff registry nor the operator’s website displayed the new price.
On Friday, 17 July — three days after the entry into force and after the publication of the clarifications —, the tariff page on acu.md still cited the old decision, from May 2025, with 23.54 lei for water and 14.71 lei for sewerage, and the ANRE registry displayed the same values. The legal tariff in force remains the one in the Official Gazette: Decision no. 416, published on 14 July, open to challenge until around 13 August.
The annual-reports page on the operator’s website, by contrast, has been brought up to date: on 13 July the operator published the management report and the performance-indicators report for 2025. Our 14 July article stated that the most recent published report was the one for 2022 — a statement that was no longer accurate at the time of publication; we are correcting it.