“Ungheni has the most expensive water in Moldova.” The claim came up dozens of times in the comments under the news that the tariff had risen to 40.01 lei per cubic metre. One reader even offered a benchmark: “in Rîșcani a cubic metre is 31 lei, water from artesian wells.” We checked the perception against the documents that set the price of water across the country — the tariffs approved by the National Energy Regulatory Agency (ANRE). The short answer: no, Ungheni does not have the most expensive water in Moldova. Not even close.
Eighth cheapest out of some thirty towns
At 40.01 lei/m³ for household consumers (25.17 lei for drinking water and 14.84 lei for sewerage and treatment), Ungheni sits in the country’s cheaper third. Out of nearly thirty operators with comparable tariffs — water plus sewerage, the household rate — only seven charge less than Ungheni.
The cheapest by far is Chișinău: 18.62 lei/m³, less than half of Ungheni. Then come Apa-Canal Măgdăcești (Criuleni) at 25.56 lei, Regia Apă-Canal Soroca at 30.56, Apă-Canal Strășeni at 31.74, Cahul at 37.20 and two more small operators, Iurceni and Leova, at around 38–39 lei. Only then comes Ungheni.
Above it sit at least nineteen towns. Cantemir pays 44.58 lei/m³, Orhei 49.18, Edineț 50.59, Drochia 54.66, Nisporeni 60.54, Fălești 67.55. And at the top are two towns where a cubic metre costs more than double Ungheni’s: Basarabeasca, at about 82 lei, and Glodeni, at nearly 89. The country’s median — the middle level — falls around 48–50 lei, somewhere near Orhei. Ungheni is clearly below it.
A note on method: these are the tariffs in force today, but approved in different years — some in 2026, others in 2024 or 2025 — so an exact “current” ranking calls for caution. The order of magnitude, however, does not change: Ungheni is among the cheap ones, not the expensive ones.
The Rîșcani example, checked
The benchmark the reader gave — “Rîșcani, 31 lei, water from wells” — does not hold up as a figure. In ANRE’s registry, Rîșcani’s tariff is not approved by the agency directly but by the local council (ANRE only endorses it), and the values in the table show around 16 lei for water and 29 for sewerage — so, in total, closer to 45 lei rather than 31. The figure of 31 lei does not appear in any official decision we could consult.
What is true, though, is the part about the source. Rîșcani takes its water from seven artesian wells — groundwater, cheap to extract. Ungheni takes it from the Prut — surface water, which passes through a treatment plant. On the drinking-water line, an Ungheni resident does pay more (25.17 lei versus about 16 in Rîșcani). But this is precisely where the comparison is a trap: water pumped from underground is cheap, yet not always good.
Why the price differs so much from one town to another
The first explanation, and the strongest, is the number of consumers. The big costs — plants, networks, energy — are shared among everyone who receives water. Chișinău draws from the Dniester and distributes tens of millions of cubic metres a year; a small town like Glodeni moves hundreds of times less. The same fixed costs, divided among far fewer people, produce a much higher price per cubic metre. That is why the capital is cheap and small towns are expensive. Ungheni, with its roughly 26,000 residents plus the connected villages, sits in the middle.
The second has to do with the water source — and here intuition misleads. Surface water, from a river, needs a treatment plant, and therefore investment; in exchange, it is of better quality. Water from artesian wells is cheap to extract, but in many parts of Moldova it is not drinkable without extra treatment: the National Agency for Public Health found, in 2020–2022, that over half of the hundreds of village aqueducts analysed exceeded the norms for fluoride, boron or hydrogen sulphide — Ungheni among the named districts. Those problem aqueducts are the village ones, on groundwater; the town of Ungheni drinks treated water from the Prut. The higher price partly buys better quality, too.
Then come the losses in old networks — nationwide, almost 40% of the water pumped is lost along the way, and the loss is covered through the tariff as well — and the cost of electricity for pumping. In Ungheni, wastewater is pumped some thirteen kilometres to the treatment plant, which pushes up the operator’s energy bill.
Correction (14 July 2026). In the original version we wrote that electricity for pumping “amounts to about a fifth of the price”. That figure is wrong for Ungheni. The regulator’s substantiation documents for the 2026 tariff show that electricity accounts for 9% of the operator’s recognised cost — and that in 2026 it fell by 19.4%. The dominant component is staff costs: 77.2%. We set this out here. We apologise.
So why does it feel like we pay the most
Because the tariff has just risen. On 7 July, ANRE approved the increase to 40.01 lei, 1.76 more, eleven days after the city hall had announced the price would stay unchanged. A fresh hike, arriving right after a promise to hold the line, feels sharper than any ranking shows — all the more on a bill you pay every month, with incomes that do not rise as fast as prices.
The perception that Ungheni pays the most is not borne out by the figures. But the frustration behind it — that the price is going up, and the decision is taken in Chișinău, not in Ungheni — remains well founded. The price of water in Ungheni is set not by the city hall but by ANRE, based on the costs declared by “Apă-Canal Ungheni” — a company wholly owned by the municipality and run on public money.