Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
key issue is safety of drinking water delivered at the household tap. Often,
the distribution-system piping uses materials and equipment that do not
result in watertight piping but have “holes” that tend to soak up excreta
in the vicinity (which is often there do to lack of excreta management).
This soaking up is intensified by the fact that many of the WSSs are
not able to maintain pressures 24 hours day, resulting in marked pressure
fluctuations.
There is a lack of any monitoring of water safety for drinking at household
taps, due primarily to the fact that most the DC health authorities, unlike
those in the ICs, have thus far not given significant attention to this need.
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The sad fact that the people customers believe they should be furnished with
water at low cost, and this practice has been going on for so long that the
UWSSs are unable to collect enough tariffs to finance costs. Often, the total
revenue is barely sufficient to pay for O&M costs, with nothing for return
on investment (and nothing for profit).
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In most DCs, the only city that does sometimes receive adequate attention
with competent WSSs is the country capital city, which, because of its politi-
cal importance, does receive special attention, including extraordinary financial
assistance plus use of expat consultants. However, this kind of assistance is rarely
ever furnished to secondary cities (most of which do not have sufficient taxing
powers to afford this level of attention).
An example of a problem facing DCs relates to the Provincial Waterworks
Authority (PWA) of Thailand, which has responsibility for all community
UWSSs in the country except the capital (Bangkok), including use of rapid
sand filter plants throughout the country, which commonly produce effluents
with turbidities — not of 0.1 ppm as per the design, but in range of 5 to
10 ppm, because of the lack of adequate budgets for financing competent O&M
operators. Although the IAAs have given many grants for funding programs
for training of these operators, these programs do not deal with the “root”
O&M problem, which is the low pay for these workers. Such training programs
per se cannot correct this problem. In fact, such programs commonly result
in causing the workers who have potential talents to leave their jobs to take
better-paying jobs, which they are able to get because of the training. Use
of the private sector has not been able to solve this problem, as has been
the experience of many DCs including DCs in Latin America
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, because
the private sector companies, to operate efficiently with profits, must charge
much higher water use rates, which infuriates the public (so the governments
tend to back down).
Suggested Approach for Improving IAA Assistance to DCs
What can be feasibly done in a typical DC to improve its UWSSs, taking into account
the constraints already noted? The experience of the World Bank on projects in
