A sustainability assessment tool for rural water services

Ryan Schweitzer and James Mihelcic from the University of South Florida have developed a Sustainability Assessment Tool for community-managed rural water systems [1]. The tool is novel because it focuses specifically on community management during the post construction phase. It can be used to characterize specific needs of rural communities in the management of their water systems, and identify weaknesses in training regimes or support mechanisms.

The tool examines eight indicators: activity level, participation, governance, tariff payment, accounting transparency, financial durability, repair service, and system function. For each indicator there are one of more measures (15 in total) and a target defining three categories of sustainability -unlikely, possible and likely – see the example below:

Schweitzer and Mihelcic tested the tool for a sample of 61 rural communities in the Dominican Republic, which were served by gravity-fed/or motor-assisted water systems. Twenty-three percent of systems were likely to sustainable, 59% were possibly sustainable, while for 18% sustainability was unlikely.

Communities that were visited more often by supporting agencies experienced better community participation and financial durability. Systems that had more transparent accounting had higher compliance with the monthly tariff payments. However as a water system aged, this transparency decreased which may be a result of the number of active individuals participating with the water committee in the community. System age was also strongly correlated to the scores for the sustainability indicators.

The authors conclude that their findings show how important long-term involvement by outside groups is for the success of community-managed systems. This has consequences for budgets as long-term costs may be higher than previously assumed if want systems to keep working.

[1] Schweitzer, R.W. and Mihelcic, J.R., 2012. Assessing sustainability of community management of rural water systems in the developing world. Journal of water, sanitation and hygiene for development, 2 (1), pp. 20–30. doi:10.2166/washdev.2012.056

For more information contact:

Ryan W. Schweitzer, Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of South Florida, USA, E-mail: rschweit [at] mail.usf.edu

Renewed research call for faecal sludge secondary treatment options in Bangladesh

IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre announces a renewed research call for:

Faecal sludge secondary treatment technologies for challenging settings

This call is part of the BRAC WASH II programme in which EUR 1.5 million will be used for innovative research, tendered to consortia of leading European and Bangladeshi research organisations.

The planned duration of the faecal sludge research project will be 18 months.

The anticipated cost of the project is EUR 325,000. In addition there is EUR 50,000 available for piloting. (Separate budget needs to be included for this).

To download the guidelines and application form go to: www.irc.nl/page/73136

The deadline for submission of full proposal application forms is: 11 January 2013.

Future research calls will focus on low-cost water supply technologies; Geo-referenced database for monitoring; menstrual hygiene management; and saline intrusion.

Please do not send requests for information or applications to the WASH Research News blog.

UNESCO-IHE and partners offering twenty PhD positions on pro-poor sanitation innovation

Twenty PhD Positions are available in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Funded Project on Pro-poor Sanitation Innovations, named “Stimulating local innovation on sanitation for the urban poor in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia”.

UNESCO-IHE, The Netherlands, and the following partners: Makerere University in Uganda, KNUST in Ghana, AIT in Thailand, 2iE in Burkina Faso, ITB in Indonesia, UCT in South Africa, UFMG in Brazil, and Univalle in Colombia were awarded a US$8 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The grant will be used to finance a 5-year capacity building and research project to stimulate local innovation on sanitation for the urban poor in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia.

To support the research component of the project 20 PhD positions for junior researchers are funded by the project at 8 host institutions.

The five research themes are:

• Smart sanitation provision for slums & informal settlements
• Emergency sanitation following natural & anthropological disasters
• Resource‐oriented decentralized sanitation
• Low‐cost wastewater collection & treatment
• Faecal sludge management

Deadline for application: 15 December 2011

For more information and application instructions go to the UNESCO-IHE web site

Bangladesh: natural sediment may shield groundwater from arsenic

Contamination of deep groundwater with arsenic from shallower sources may not be as serious as feared — if pumping deep water is limited to domestic use, a study has found.

Exposure to arsenic-contaminated groundwater has been linked to almost one in every five deaths in Bangladesh, and some 100,000 deep wells have been constructed to pump deeper, cleaner water. Recent modelling studies have suggested that these cleaner water sources are also being contaminated — from shallower water seeping down to replenish deeper wells.

But a study published in Nature Geoscience [doi: 10.1038/ngeo1283] found that natural adsorption of arsenic by sediment — sand in the aquifers — reduces contamination risk in most areas.

The study was conducted as part of the Columbia University Superfund Research Program on the “Health Effects and Geochemistry of Arsenic and Manganese“.

Read more [Syful Islam, SciDev.Net, 10 Oct 2011]

New paper on efficacy of alcohol-based hand sanitizers (ABHS) in field conditions

Pickering, A.J., Davis, J. and Boehm, A.B. (2011). Efficacy of alcohol-based hand sanitizer on hands soiled with dirt and cooking oil. Journal of water and health ; vol. 9, no. 3 ; p. 429–433. doi:10.2166/wh.2011.138 (pay per view)

Abstract

Handwashing education and promotion are well established as effective strategies to reduce diarrhea and respiratory illness in countries around the world. However, access to reliable water supplies has been identified as an important barrier to regular handwashing in low-income countries. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer (ABHS) is an effective hand hygiene method that does not require water, but its use is not currently recommended when hands are visibly soiled. This study evaluated the efficacy of ABHS on volunteers’ hands artificially contaminated with Escherichia coli in the presence of dirt (soil from Tanzania) and cooking oil. ABHS reduced levels of E. coli by a mean of 2.33 log colony forming units (CFU) per clean hand, 2.32 log CFU per dirt-covered hand, and 2.13 log CFU per oil-coated hand. No significant difference in efficacy was detected between hands that were clean versus dirty or oily. ABHS may be an appropriate hand hygiene method for hands that are moderately soiled, and an attractive option for field settings in which access to water and soap is limited.

Contact: Amy Janel Pickering, Emmet Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University, amyjanel@stanford.edu

Related resources:

• Jenna Davis (Stanford University) – Research: Water, sanitation & health
• Health in Your Hands – Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap
• WSP – Global Scaling Up Handwashing Project

US-Ghana team gets Gates Foundation grant to transform human waste into energy

A US-Ghanaian team has been awarded US$ 1.5 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a biorefinery that will convert fecal sludge to biodiesel and methane.

Prof. Kartik Chandran. Photo: Columbia University

Kartik Chandran, an associate professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia Engineering is leading the team that includes Ashley Murray, founder and director of Waste Enterprisers, and Moses Mensah, a Chemical Engineering professor at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Chandran may involve the Columbia University Engineers without Borders Ghana team, for whom he acts as faculty advisor, as well.

Chandran and his team aim to develop a bioprocess technology to convert the organic compounds present in fecal sludge to biodiesel and methane, two potent sources of energy, and thus convert a waste-processing facility into a biorefinery. The biorefinery will not only be an economical source of fuel, but, by minimizing discharge of fecal sludge into local water bodies, it will also contribute to improved human health and sanitation. Chandran says that potential outcomes of his work will also include integrating the bioprocess technology component into a social enterprise business model that will further promote widespread implementation of this approach and technology across the globe, especially in developing economies.

Gender study links water infrastructure to school attendance in Ghana

Understanding and integrating gender perspectives in water infrastructure projects is central to addressing poverty and gender equality. Men and women have different uses for water, a reflection of their roles in the household and more broadly, the economy. Women face disproportionate challenges in accessing water supply and sanitation services.

Women and girls spend more time than men in water collection, a burden that restricts them from participating in other productive activities. Ensuring equitable access to convenient water sources can reduce women’s work load, and help free up time for agriculture, other economic activities, and improve girls’ school attendance.

A new World Bank study on gender and water access [1], suggests that a 15 minute reduction in water collection time increases the proportion of girls attending school in Ghana by 8-12 percent. The authors (Celine Nauges and Jon Strand) based their analysis on four rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys from Ghana, in 1993-94, 1998-99, 2003 and 2008. Using GPS coordinates; the authors build an artificial panel of clusters, identifying the closest neighbors within each round. On this basis they estimated the relationship between girls’ school attendance and water hauling activity, correcting for potential endogeneity of communities and household characteristics.

These results serve to document some of the multiple and wide benefits to the population of increased tap water access, in African countries and beyond.

[1] Nauges, C. and Strand, J. (2011). Water hauling and girls’ school attendance : some new evidence from Ghana. Download presentation.

Related web site: World Bank – Gender—Water and Women in Kenya