sewer tariffs as well as expenditures by utilities. Local level At the local level, in municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants Consultative Commissions for Local Public Services assist municipalities in regulating service providers. The Commissions were created through the 1992 water law. After the commissions initially met with little success, they were strengthened through another law in 2002. Their purpose now is to provide better information on public services through the review of annual reports by the service providers and to be consulted on key decisions such as the delegation of service provision to the private sector or the creation of a municipal enterprise. The consultative commissions are usually chaired by the mayor and their members are members of the municipal council or are nominated by the municipal council. According to a 2003 report by the Cour des Comptes only few Consultative Committees have been created and, where they have been created, they have sometimes never met. Service provision There are about 16,700 "organizing entities" (municipalities and municipal associations) in the French sanitation sector and 12,400 in the water sector. Among the 36,700 municipalities in France, at least 23,000 are part of 2,000 intermunicipal utilities with the specific purpose to provide water supply and – in some cases – sanitation services. Sanitation services (understood as sewerage and wastewater treatment in this context) are sometimes provided by the same entity that provides water services, but in some cases they are provided directly by the municipality while an intermunicipal utility is in charge of water supply. Municipal associations Municipal associations (établissements publics de coopération intercommunale, EPCI) play a key role in water and sanitation service provision in France. The first ones were created during the 19th century. Today municipal associations together include 91.7% of French municipalities (33,636) and 86.7% of the French population. Not all municipal associations provide water and/or sanitation services. Some of them provide only urban transport or solid waste management, while others serve multiple purposes. The most common and oldest form of associations are the syndicats intercommunaux, of which there were 18,504 in January 2008. They do not have powers to levy taxes. 14,885 syndicats intercommunaux serve a single purpose (SIVU), which in the case of some of them is water supply and/or sanitation. The remainder serve multiple purposes (SIVOM). Subsequent laws created new types of municipal associations that sometimes compete and overlap with the syndicats intercommunaux. In particular