Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
resulting systems that are built are often not suitable for DC use; hence, they do not
function adequately, and the losses are very large. Unfortunately, the IAAs have
chosen not to invest in post-construction monitoring of actual project performance
(because it is much easier to assume satisfactory performance, and to collect facts
to the contrary would be politically disturbing), and none of the DC governments
have as yet invested in meaningful performance monitoring (such monitoring is
routine in the ICs, but as yet is absent in the DCs).
With respect to the projects for sewerage and excreta management and for
community water supply, the true picture is very unsatisfactory, particularly due
to the utilization of IC designs/standards, which depend on skilled operation and
maintenance (when it is known in advance that these will not be available). The
result is that the investments furnish only a small fraction of the services and
health protection that are assumed, with these assumptions are used to justify the
investments. About the only beneficiaries from the projects are the community's
affluent: “The rich get richer.”
It is time to recognize this reality. What is needed is a project (financed, say,
by the Global Environment Fund) that will make a critical evaluation of the actual
performance of these water supply and sanitation systems, and then reorient the
planning procedures to be realistic. This will include manuals of design and
of operation and maintenance that match the DC realities, using systems that
require the simplest levels of operation and maintenance skills, recognizing that
the existing texts and manuals, with only a very few exceptions, represent use of
conventional IC systems. Use of the private sector for operation and maintenance
is another feasible option.
Figure 4.21 shows the author's estimate of the relationship of percent of exc-
reta managed versus degree of community public health protection provided.
To summarize the United States/IC versus DC current situations on control of
water-related diseases, the ICs have reduced the major diseases (cholera, typhoid,
etc.) to negligible levels, and their emphasis today is on control of relatively minor
water-related disease such as control of “crypto” and reduction/elimination of
THMs in urban water supply systems, whereas these issues are hardly pertinent in
the DCs, which have yet to achieve control of the major diseases. It is the author's
estimate that current U.S. expenditures on the nonmajor diseases probably exceed
the total expenditures of all DCs on the major diseases.
Disease Reporting
Philippines
Reporting of disease cases is usually poorly managed in the DCs
due to low budgets for this function. A study of this problem in the Philippines
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in 1983 showed that the data reported by provinces varied a lot from the infor-
mation in the annual reports of the Ministry of Health, and discussions with the
responsible reporting doctors in the provinces showed they were employed only
on a part-time basis with inadequate time for this task.
Resettlement Villages in China
It was found, as part of the resettlement
program for China's Yellow River Xiaolangdi dam, in most Chinese rural villages
