Punjab: small scale wastewater treatment systems
Jacky Foo
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---forwarded message----
Punjab: small scale wastewater treatment systems
Submitted by Jacky Foo on Fri, 20/07/2007 - 06:31.
M P Singh wrote (Tue, 17/07/2007).
>....For the last three years I have been involved in
>providing NRI (Non resident Indian) NGOs with
>Technical support on providing sanitation facilities
>in the villages in Punjab. The Punjab here is not
>much different from the Punjab in Pakistan.
>What we have been doing here is:
>
>1) Providing Simplified Sewerage System (underground)
> in villages.....(cut)...
>2) Providing Primary treatment mostly via
>conventional septic tank .....
>3) Providing secondary treatment with either
>of the following:
>a) Providing a recirculating sand & Gravel filter
>and then taking the water to a village pond,
>for onward usage in the fields. This method is
>expensive, energy intensive and requires maintenance.
in this secondary treatment, who pays for the electricity costs for recirculation and how much is it in comparison to the wage of a worker ?
MPS>b) Providing duckweed treatment followed by
>fishery. Community sharing of the fish is a problem.
duckweek-fish system is used in some places successfully.
How is community sharing of fish a problem in Punjab ?
-----
Jacky Foo
http://www.iobbnet.org
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++++
Jacky Foo
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Punjab: small scale wastewater treatment systems
Submitted by M P Singh on Sun, 22/07/2007 - 06:57.
Response to Jacky Foo
A small fees is charged from every household for upkeep as well as for
electricity.
I have not been able to understand this. It is in the Villagers'
psyche perhaps. Whenever a matter of community sharing comes, there is
always a problem.
We are now to demonstrate total ( Solid and Liquid ) waste management
with methane capture and, wherever feasible, with electricity
generation. There was a problem with collection of the solid waste
especially the one rotting in the form of Anaerobic heaps. We have at
last found a village where we have managed to convince the villagers
that they will be given back richer manure after removal of the
methane gas, in proportion to the number of cattle they own and the
number of members of the family.
Jacky Foo
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Upkeeping: small fee charged
Submitted by Jacky Foo on Mon, 23/07/2007 - 20:13.
MPS>I have not been able to understand this.
>It is in the Villagers' psyche perhaps.
>Whenever a matter of community sharing comes,
>there is always a problem.
for me, the sustainability of a technological application e.g. CWL is
"90% management and 10 % technology", a phased used by the Chinese
when they decribed their success (in the 70s) in the advocacy of
biogas tehcnology at household level.
People must find financial incentives in having a CWL. If you cannot
provide these incentives, the technology transfer will fail.
In Kampala, my focus in the selection of plants was in their economic
value to the workers. A highly efficient system (on minimal size of
land) was a secondary priority. If workers find incentives to maintain
a 1000 m2 system and can generate income, it is better to have such a
system than to design and provide a system that can do the nutrient
removal job on 200 m2 but which requires households to pay a fee.
The strategy is to get people to use a technology, then it is easier
to increase nutrient removal efficiency of the system later.
Also remember "anything" is better than "nothing". The plants will do
their jobs (some slower than others, just like people).
Jacky Foo
++++++
Sustainabilty
Submitted by Dick Grimshaw on Mon, 23/07/2007 - 23:06.
Jackie, I don't agree with you that 'anything' is better than
'nothing'. in my long career in tropical agriculture and rural
development I have seen too many 'half cocked' technologies that don't
work too well. The result is rejection by the user. To take this
further a poor application of a good technology often results in the
rejection of the technology. Thus we find that in east and south east
Asia (especially China) technologies are generally applied well and
the results are good and the technology is accepted readily. This was
the case with the introduction of vetiver to China, Thailand and
Vietnam for bio-engineering purposes.
In India, back in the 1980s and 90s vetiver applications were not that
successful because there were always a bunch of people who thought
they knew better or who had other agendas. The wrong species of
vetiver was frequently used, application, supervision and management
was bad; and we were told that there were '40 other grasses' that were
as good as or better not true) than vetiver, the result was that the
technology never caught on as it should have done and was often
rejected. Nobody bothered to listen to farmers in Kerala who had been
using the vetiver grass technology very successfully for soil
conservation for decades - these guys after all were just simple
farmers! Hopefully these problems are behind us now with the likes of
MP Singh, PK Haridas and others doing the right things with the
technology.
Often people look superficially at information, don't look into the
detail, and then reject the technology. In the USA people who should
know better reject vetiver grass technology because they say that they
don't want another invasive "kudzu" - people ask for vetiver 'seeds'
when there is a ton of information indicating that vetiver that is
promoted for bio-engineering is either seedless or sterile. Sadly too
many folk just do not bother to read.
So coming back to Pakistan the best way is the right way, if the best
way can be used in a multipurpose way and provide additional benefit
that's great, if on the other hand it has no additional benefits but
it does the job of cleaning up sewage effluent efficiently (clean
output, no mosquitoes, no smell)then that is the way to go.
Fortunately vetiver combines both!
Dick Grimshaw
Jacky Foo
+++++++++++
Sustainabilty - Upkeeping: small fee charged
Submitted by Jacky Foo on Tue, 24/07/2007 - 06:17.
DG wrote:
>Jackie, I don't agree with you that 'anything' is
>better than 'nothing'. in my long career in tropical
>agriculture and rural development I have seen too
>many 'half cooked' technologies that don't work
>too well. The result is rejection by the user.
>To take this further a poor application of a
>good technology often results in the rejection
>of the technology.
For a stand-alone statement: ....'anything' is better than
'nothing'....., I too would consider similar consequences and would
react as you just did.
My off-guard comment was made in the context of failures as indicated
in the case by M P Singh.
>A small fees is charged from every household for
>upkeep as well as for electricity.
>I have not been able to understand this. It is in
>the Villagers' psyche perhaps. Whenever a matter
>of community sharing comes, there is always a problem.
...maybe I should have asked MP Singh these questions first before I
shared my experience (with assumption and anticipation of his
response).
To MP Singh:
Q: Did the project managed to get the households to share electricity
costs (and other costs) ?
Q: is the maintenance of the project (CWL) solely covered by the
users ?
Q: if not.... who pays for the management and operation costs of the
project ?
Q: is the CWL still operational (and if yes, what is it that kept it
going (in operation)) ?
To Dick G
I am also attracted to your experience about failures of projects...
DG>In India, back in the 1980s and 90s vetiver
>applications were not that successful because
>there were always a bunch of people who thought
>they knew better or who had other agendas.
>The wrong species of vetiver was frequently used,
>application, supervision and management was bad;
>....
>Nobody bothered to listen to farmers in Kerala
>who had been using the vetiver grass technology
>very successfully for soil conservation for decades
DG>....if the best way can be used in a multipurpose
>way and provide additional benefit that's great,....(cut)...
>Fortunately vetiver combines both!
Q to Liaqat H:
- How do people (farmers and handicraft makers) in Islamabad use
Vetiver grass ? (but I understand that you dont have vetiver in
Islamabad)
- If there is no use of Vetiver grass from your site, and households
are not willing to pay for maintenance costs, what problems do you
anticipate concerning the sustainability of your project ? Who owns
the project ?
- where is your budget of 10,000 US$ coming from ? Is there a monthly
budget for maintaining the CWL that you will build ?
DG>if on the other hand it has no additional benefits
>but it does the job of cleaning up sewage effluent
>efficiently (clean output, no mosquitoes, no smell)
>then that is the way to go.
.....then it is just a clean up job
Q to Dick G and MP Singh
- when a CWL is used for the sole purpose of pollution control (in a
developing country), who pays for the costs of operation of a clean
up / wastewater treatment?
- Does your answer(s) provide a solution to the operational costs of
Liaqat's ambition and independent initiative to build a CWL for a
community of 15 households in Islamabad in order to reduce pollution
of a river ?
regards
Jacky Foo
++++++++++
Punjab: small scale wastewater treatment systems
When I spoke of small fees it was in the context of the recirculation
filter technology. The villages where this has been provided, the
villagers are still paying a small fees, though the community within
itself made adjustments, like the able pay a little more. This becomes
possible as most of the households have members living abroad, earning
in Dollars or Pounds. They pay a little more. As I mentioned in my
first post, most of these villages are NRI villages. The NRIs have
contributed nearly 50% of the initial capital and in some villages
even created a corpus fund. Income from this fund is used to pay the
people who maintain the place and to pay the energy bills.
You are right about sustainability. The best gas digesters for 'Gobar
gas'were first made in India. Yet the success rate of the community
digesters in the North was near Zilch. Now, all over again, large
dairy farms are being set up, more for the gas and the energy than for
the milk. The problem is local and my comment is confined to the local
scenario.
Duckweed Technology is sustainable and paying. But there was a problem
with the community sharing of fish. The ponds are still operational,
only the protein is being harvested for the cattle. This gives a side
income to the poor section that takes care of the site.
The economic value of Vetiver is no less. So in the village in which
we intend to demonstrate now, sustainability is paramount. We have
chosen a village where the residents have agreed to exchange their
animal waste and other degradable organic waste, including kitchen
waste with manure that will be produced after subjecting the waste to
biomethanation. The quality of the septic tank would be upgraded to a
multi-baffle reactor, to slow up the upflow in various segments to
allow the solids to settle in shorter HRT. This would result in more
methane recovery. Many such small projects will be bundled under the
Clean Development Mechanism and Tradable Carbon Credits will be
earned. The secondary treatment with Vetiver will not only ensure good
quality effluent, capable of any type of discharge but also will be
self-sustaining as we can see from various inputs.
So, the plan is not "something is better than nothing" but everything
is possible and should be done in a gainful manner. Large communities
that have huge quantities of solid organic waste, can have total
solutions, as described, and can even think of an IRR on investment.
Best wishes,
MPS
Jacky Foo
+++++++
NRI (Non resident Indian) NGOs
Submitted by Jacky Foo on Thu, 26/07/2007 - 08:50.
M P Singh wrote (Tue, 17/07/2007).
>....For the last three years I have been involved in
>providing NRI (Non resident Indian) NGOs with
>Technical support on providing sanitation facilities
>in the villages in Punjab.
In http://www.iobbnet.org/drupal/node/view/973#comment-3335 MPS wrote:
>.....most of these villages are NRI villages.
>The NRIs have contributed nearly 50% of the initial
>capital and in some villages even created a corpus
>fund. Income from this fund is used to pay the people
>who maintain the place and to pay the energy bills.
very interesting system to ensure sustainability.
Q: do the family members abroad contribute to the costs of their
respective families only or they also donate to the project (with
recirculating sand & Gravel filter) as a whole (i.e. for their home
village)
I am interested to know more about the origin of the idea (i.e. NRI
NGOs) and how it is started for a village.
e.g.
1. ...who initiates an idea e.g. providing sanitation facilities
2. ...how do people (locally or abroad) get together to agree and act
as a group (as in the case where a recirculating sand & Gravel filter
is needed so that the treated water goes to a village pond and then to
the crop fields. P.S. in this case, the system is nutrients from
treated effluent is absorbed by crops in a farming community)
3...how much treated water are we talking about ?
4...do local end-users (farmers) pay/contribute more than the
pollutors/non end-users ?
Jacky Foo
++++++++++++
NRI (Non resident Indian) NGOs
Jacky asked:
Q: do the family members abroad contribute to the costs of their
respective families only or they also donate to the project (with
recirculating sand & Gravel filter) as a whole (i.e. for their home
village)
I am interested to know more about the origin of the idea (i.e. NRI
NGOs) and how it is started for a village.
e.g.
1. ...who initiates an idea e.g. providing sanitation facilities
2. ...how do people (locally or abroad) get together to agree and act
as a group (as in the case where a recirculating sand & Gravel filter
is needed so that the treated water goes to a village pond and then to
the crop fields. P.S. in this case, the system is nutrients from
treated effluent is absorbed by crops in a farming community)
3...how much treated water are we talking about ?
4...do local end-users (farmers) pay/contribute more than the
pollutors/non end-users ?
Ans:
Most of the NRI NGOs started with their respective villages. Some of
them got together in Canada, USA & UK and formed Societies there. Then
they set up voluntary societies here as well. The Govt;, in order to
encourage them, laid down a scheme that it would put up 50% of the
total cost of modernising a village. Modernising includes:
1) Augmenting water Supply.
2) Providing Sewerage System including connecting every household.
3) Providing Primary wastewater treatment mostly through the good old
septic tank.
4) Providing Secondary treatment as we are discussing.
5) Collecting the water in a pond.
6) This water is then pumped out of the living area and into the
fields as and when required.
7)Concreting 100% of the streets so that there are no puddles.
8) Providing Street lights.
9) Providing Computor education via addition in school infrastructure.
10) Providing Community halls
11) Providing Vocational training to women.
As more and more villages are being done, interest of local
communities has increased. There is now a willingness to cotribute and
to participate in the upkeep too.
Where there are no NRIs, the Govt; is providing 90% funds to villages
for sewerage and sewage treatment as well as water supply. The
villages have to deposit the balance 10% upfront and have to undertake
the responsibility of the upkeep.
Here they are providing a small bore sewerage system with an
intercepting chamber outside every house. The solids are retained in
the chamber. The water is carried via small bore pipes for appropriate
secondary treatment.
I have a quarrel with this small bore system though.
The area where I am working, that is on the ecology of the river, is
working on a unique system of public partcipation. Our outgoing
president has been talking about it in all countries that he has
visited.
Best wishes,
M.P. Singh