More good reads!

Three more good reads for IYS2008: (1) Sanitation Challenges and Solutions (IWA Reference Paper, 2008); (2) Progress and Prospects on Water: For a Clean and Healthy World, with Special Focus on Sanitation − Synthesis of the 2008 Stockholm World Water Week (SIWI, 2008), especially pages 7−12; and (3) Water and Sanitation For Developing Clean and Healthy Cities − Seminar Report from the World Urban Forum 4, Nanjing, China (SIWI, 2008).

The last publication includes the presentation Water & Sanitation for Developing Clean and Healthy Cities by Dr Graham Alabaster of UN-Habitat, in which he presented the Lake Victoria sampling data for water supply in Kenya as an example to show that statistics on access to water coverage change significantly when quantity, cost and burden of collection are considered. (Monitoring that only looks at the type of water source can mislead policy makers who rely on these statistics.) The extreme case here is the town of Kisii where 71 percent of the population had access to an “improved” water supply in 2006, but only 2 percent had access to an “adequate” water supply (defined as >20 litres of water per person per day, <10 percent of household income spent on water, and <1 hour per household per day spent collecting water) (see blog of 14 January).

Free access in DCs to all IWA journals

The International Water Association has just announced that free online access to all IWA Publishing journals (including Water Research) will now be available in developing countries under the HINARI and OARE schemes − at last, and only five years after I said they should do this (see Free on-line access for poor countries to IWA journals?), but better late than never.

The list of countries qualifying for free access is given here.

WatSan advocacy

I was kindly sent a free copy of the new World Bank book Environmental Health and Child Survival: Epidemiology, Economics, Experiences − an excellent read, and here’s what Sandy Cairncross, Professor of Environmental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says about it on the back cover:

This rigorous study is a godsend to anyone involved in advocacy for water and sanitation in developing countries. Until now, proving that environmental health measures make good sense economically has been a tricky business. Now this rigorous and detailed study shows that inadequate environmental health has huge costs to the economy (about 9 percent of the GDP of typical developing countries) in addition to the pain and suffering they cause. For politicians who are unmoved by arguments that failure to invest in water and sanitation will make their people poor, this study offers a clincher: it shows how lack of investment will also negatively affect their children’s educational and cognitive performance, because of the effects of malnutrition, exacerbated by frequent episodes of illness.

The economic evidence that WatSan works is building up and in IYS2008 we need to get it all across to politicians in developing countries, so that they stop permitting their citizens (to use the words of the late Barbara Ward) to “defecate themselves to death” − actually “permitting” is not strong enough; lack of action means that they are, in effect, encouraging this appalling waste of life to continue.

The EcoSan fallacy − again!

Unfortunately I couldn’t go to the IRC symposium on Sanitation for the Urban Poor which was held in Delft, The Netherlands, during 19−21 November. One of the papers presented was entitled “Alternatives to waterborne sanitation – a comparative study – limits and potentials” and, yes, it’s EcoSan promotion, but with the common error of comparing EcoSan costs (given as USD 935 per household) only with those of conventional sewerage (USD 1038–1227 per household). I’d guess the cost of condominial sewerage would be no more than ⅔ of that of conventional sewerage, so cheaper than EcoSan! Why is this mistake so often made and why is it tolerated? It certainly doesn’t do EcoSan any favours.

IYS2008: another brilliant read

This time it’s the paper The great promise of the International Year of Sanitation by Jon Lane (Executive Director of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council) in the October issue of Waterlines. Read it! A couple of quotes to whet your appetite:

► “…our dysfunctional world consists of two halves: half have good sanitation, and half don’t even have basic sanitation. For the half with good sanitation, it is a world with access to the collection, transport, treatment and disposal or reuse of human excreta, domestic waste water and solid waste. It is also a world where associated hygiene behaviours such as washing hands after using the toilet, before and after preparing food, and when handling sick children, are ingrained routines. For the other half without even basic sanitation, it is a world where, quite simply, proper disposal of human excreta would be a luxury of life-saving proportions.”

► “Over the past 10 years diarrhoea has killed more children than all the people lost in armed conflicts since the Second World War. That depressing reality can be turned around, and lives can be saved, through clean toilets. Clean toilets generate economic development. Clean toilets bring social inclusion and dignity. Clean toilets protect the environment. And clean toilets for everyone can be achieved. These messages must continue to be heard beyond the International Year of Sanitation.”

Quite.

World Toilet Day

Today is World Toilet Day! Read all about it here (WaterAid), here (World Toilet Organization) and here (Royal Society For Public Health @ Medical News Today). Play WaterAid’s game “Turdlywinks”, buy a WaterAid bog, or enter the WaterAid lottery! Get involved!

Low-cost sewerage in the Nile Delta

This week I’ve been asked to look at low-cost sewerage schemes in two small villages in the Governorate of Kafr El Sheikh in the Nile Delta in Egypt (populations <5000). This is a GTZ-funded project on decentralized wastewater management, executed by Rodeco, a firm of German consulting engineers (details also here), and Aldar Consulting Engineers, Cairo. One village, El Mofty El Kobra, has had settled sewerage since February 2005 and the other, Om Sen, has had simplified sewerage since November 2007. In both villages the wastewater is pumped from the village a short distance and then treated in waste stabilization ponds. The capital costs were covered by funds from GTZ and the Egyptian Fund for Social Development.

Apart from the different forms of sewerage, the solutions adopted for the two villages (and several others not yet commissioned) were essentially identical. Each village had to form a Community Development Association which first of all had to raise from the village households the money required for the waste stabilization ponds (about 1½ feddans or 0.63 ha). Once the system was commissioned the CDA assumed ownership of the whole system and responsibility for its operation and maintenance (collection and treatment) − it does this by (a) collecting a monthly fee of EGP 10 (USD 1.83) from each household and (b) contracting a local contractor to do the actual O&M of the system, including in the case of El Mofty El Kobra annual desludging of the solids interceptor tanks. The monthly fee of EGP 10 represents a huge financial benefit to the village households as before the project they were each paying EGP 25−30 per month to have their ‘septic tanks’ (really cess pits) emptied − so they now pay much less for a much improved wastewater management system. Both villages have a healthy surplus in their CDA bank accounts.

There have been very few problems and both WSP systems produce effluents compliant with Egyptian standards for village wastewaters (<60 mg BOD/l, <50 mg suspended solids/l and <3000 faecal coliforms /100 ml). The one major problem was the villagers discharging animal manure into the sewer system − they thought this was a convenient method of disposal, not realising the hugely adverse effect it would have on the wastewater treatment plant (the BOD increased by about ten times!). The problem was solved (more or less, anyway) by (a) explaining to them why they shouldn’t dispose of animal manure in the sewers and (b) by the CDA fining them if they did − the fine is very large (EGP 400 for the first offence, EGP 1000 for repeat offences), so very few households now put animal manure in the sewers.

Water consumption has increased from <40 litres per person per day to ~80−90 lpd as, prior to the project, all households made a real effort to keep consumption low in order to avoid having to pay for their ‘septic tank’ to be emptied more than once a month. Now there is no such requirement and they use as much water as they need − indeed quite a few households now enjoy the status of having washing machines!

The engineering aspects of the project are quite straightforward (correct design of the sewer system, pumping station and the ponds) and account for only about 20% of the consulting engineers’ time. The remaining 80% of their time is spent on social aspects of the system: activating, developing and supporting the CDAs, which need to understand how the system works, how it should be operated and maintained, how to bank the money collected each month from the village households, and how to contract and supervise the O&M contractor. The evidence so far is that the CDAs are performing very well.

The USD 201 million World Bank project ‘Egypt − Integrated Sanitation and Sewerage Infrastructure Project’ (Project Appraisal Document here, Project Information Document here) will extend this work on decentralized wastewater management. So in the none too distant future the wastewater management models developed in El Mofty El Kobra and Om Sen will be replicated many times over, which can only be good news for Nile Delta villagers.