Water, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management

A land of scarcity. That’s what Nepal is fast turning into—especially by way of water supply. And in terms of sanitation and solid waste management, the country has to learn a lot more lessons—both at the administrative and consumer levels. The concept that wastage is not to be recycled but to be dumped has also aggravated the problem further. Conserving water, following the due sanitation process, and recycling waste—that’s what the endeavour should be; while NGOs, communities and even business houses have been involved in these areas, the citizens at large are yet to fully buy into these concepts. Which is surprising; for example, traditionally, in the field of waste management, Nepalis had their viable mechanisms. Says Bhushan Tuladhar, director, Environment and Public Health Organisation: “Our traditions had some highly recommendable ways of dealing with waste. Some 60 years ago, Newars used to sell their waste at Rs 0.5/kg which would mean three things—that waste had a value, that waste could be managed and that one who generated the waste was responsible for its management.” He adds, “Besides household treatments, centralised institutional treatment of wastes is also a must, and that needs to be led by the government and operated by the private sector.”

Water Supply

In the national scenario, Nepal has achieved 80 percent water supply coverage. “Department of Water Supply and Sewerage (DWSS) targets to raise the coverage to cent percent by 2017 as indicated by Rural Water Supply and Sanitation National Policy and Strategy, a joint strategy of the government, donor agencies, DDCs, VDCs and local communities,” says Birendra Man Shakya, chief superintending engineer, Water Quality Improvement and Monitoring Project, DWSS. Tuladhar points out, “Irrespective of the waster supply coverage, reliability and quality of water stands as a major concern which is poor plus the supply is less than 50 percent of the demand plus the demand is irrespective of the amount of water being supplied. Per capita water demand depends on the amount of water available, ie, latent demand based on compromising use.” Shakya specifies, “Nepal’s status of water supply is at par to that of other South Asian countries; countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have the benefit of being plains with regards to the distribution of water supply. But the problem with water supply is that 38 percent of it requires rehabilitation and that only 12 percent of it is supplied with safe water, ie, presence of treatment plants.” Shakya further elaborates, “Since current basic water supply coverage is already 80 percent, 100 percent can be achieved within the stipulated time but increasing quality water supply to 50 percent is somewhat unachievable as per the Nepal Drinking Water Quality Standards prescribed by the government in 27 June 2006.”

DWSS has a five-year target of providing safe water to the cities or communities having the population of at least 10,000, which Shakya by now finds unattainable. Therefore, a steering committee has been formed to calculate the precise time when the five-year target can be fulfilled and set a new date of fulfilling the target. Shakya points out, “The major challenge which hinders achieving the target is inadequate resource allocation to the size of the project. The total budget required for the project to accomplish is Rs 3.5 billion but this fiscal year, only Rs 9.75 million was allocated for the project.” He adds, “We have been achieving the works as per the allocated resources. With the allocated resources, 29 Semi-Urban/Urban Water Supply Projects have been accomplished which cater to 500,000 population and 15 water treatment plant projects which cater to 200,000 population in 15 different districts so far. In the year 2010, six drinking water projects are running and 15 such projects have been planned for 2011.” Tuladhar complains, “The budget is insufficient plus not implemented properly as well as there is no resource mobilisation taking place which is evident from the degrading situation of Bagmati.” Shakya counters the complaint, “DWSS’s area of stretch is all around Nepal with an exception of the Kathmandu valley.”

Shakya concludes, “In all the drinking water projects, we try to make sure that the water remains safe from the source till intake. Even if treated water is supplied, its quality remains much dependent upon how the water is collected, stored and utilised in the households. To make sure that these things are in place, DWSS conducts different awareness campaigns, also regarding different ways of purifying it like boiling, filtering, chlorination and Solar Disinfection (SODIS). We also target to forward sustainable safe water campaigns to improve the health conditions and declare Safe Water Zones and integrate them as Healthy Zones.”

Sanitation

More than water management; sanitation management is of major concern in context to Nepal where more than half of the population is devoid of toilet services and also where the service is fully present like in the major cities, it has only been used as a place to dispose excreta. Excreta management is seriously lacking; simply disposing it straight to the nearby rivers. Due to the lack of its treatment, it is posing a serious threat from sanitation perspective; like in Kathmandu, Bagmati is getting polluted to the extreme.

“There exists 43 percent sanitation coverage, particularly hand washing, safe disposal of human excreta in toilet and household cleanliness in Nepal. DWSS targets to achieve cent percent sanitation coverage by 2017 as per which approximately 14,000 latrines need to be constructed each month for the next 12 years,” says Kamal Adhikary, sociologist, DWSS, Environmental Sanitation and Disaster Management Section. Adhikary says, “The allocated central budget is utilised in two ways – water supply project embedding sanitation promotion or standalone sanitation covering only hygiene/sanitation issues. Besides, in collaboration with the private organisations, we conduct advocacy and awareness campaigns through information disseminating materials and radio/TV advertisements. In addition, DWSS also facilitates in using DDC, VDC and municipality budgets to maximise local resources for sanitation because they have adequate budget, institutional strength and community penetration but lack adequate orientation to sanitation.” Adhikary mentions, “The perception of toilet as a tangible indicator of sanitation has changed now. We borrowed the new concept from South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN) held in Bangladesh in 2003 that when we talk about sanitation, we make sure that the area is Open Defecation Free (ODF). Since then, we have also been enhancing Community-led Total Sanitation and School-led Total Sanitation programmes and have declared 55 VDCs, 250 school catchments and 250 communities as ODF. Although in a small scale, the trend has been a sweeping effect.” In the leadership of DWSS, National Hygiene and Sanitation Master Plan has been formulated recently. It is a strategic vision document prepared on how scattered efforts can be synchronised and how funding mechanism can be streamlined. A steering committee involving representatives from MoLD, MoPPW, MoHP, MoE has been formed to materialise the master plan whose agenda are ODF zones declaration, total sanitation strengthening, capacity building of users’ community and reaching highly inaccessible rural areas which are out of reach for NGOs. The master plan ultimately targets poverty alleviation.

Although Kathmandu valley is 100 percent equipped with latrines, it is more unsafe than the rural areas which is well reflected in the degrading condition of the Bagmati river. Adhikary comments, “People’s efforts in cleaning Bagmati are ceremonial which are good in terms of advocacy/awareness point of view but they cannot give a tangible output. A special fund arrangement is a must if we want clean Bagmati, guided by strong institution run under regulatory mechanism. It’s not that nothing is being done in case of Bagmati; there’s a lot of efforts which simply end up nowhere due to frequent changes in the government. There is serious lack of synchronisation of the efforts to give a cumulative impact.” On this, Tuladhar comments, “There are plenty of solutions for cleaning Bagmati but they have only been taken in small scales by organisations like Nepal River Conservation Trust, Friends of Bagmati, Bagmati Service Committee, Rotary Club Yala etc,” and further adds, “Centralised institutional level treatment is lacking. Bagmati’s recharge sources have been slumped, like catchment area Sundarijal’s water has been diverted for drinking water purposes and the groundwater generation has been limited by concretisation due to massive urbanisation of the Kathmandu valley. The only resource for Bagmati’s revival is recharging the river with treated waste water. Waste Water Management (WWM) model has been forwarded by the government as Bagmati Action Plan. The government should take leadership and play the role of facilitator to encourage private players to involve.” But there are some unavoidable challenges that the centralised waste water management is facing like transportation of waste water to collect it at the central plant and high-tech central plant which cannot be held by Nepal’s electricity supply; therefore, Tuladhar points out, “Localised waste water treatment is more practical. But the decentralised treatment only cannot be a solution for a city like Kathmandu; thus, it shall urge for a combined waste water treatment.”

Today, there are four centralised waste water treatment plants in the valley which are nonfunctional - Guheswari due to poor management and electricity supply, Sundarighat because the waste water never gets there. More than technical failure, the plants have become nonfunctional due to poor management or rather they are not in the priority list of the government. Tuladhar points out, “But then something has to be done for the Bagmati river out of the proportion that comes from every land transaction in the valley but so far the amount has not been utilised.” Tuladhar has a completely sustainable model for Bagmati solution which includes Shivapuri watershed area protection with minimal use of chemical fertilisers/pesticides in the surrounding area and use of toilets for disposing excreta, WWM of the housing projects constructed at a massive scale themselves in the region downwards, WWM of the barrack therein which also is capable of doing it on its own and then recharging Bagmati with rainwater that collects in the TIA premises. Tuladhar says, “Taking these steps of WWM, the entire Bagmati in the valley can recharge further. Therefore, it is the combined effort that is capable of coming up with a solution for reviving Bagmati. Waiting for the government to get everything done is simply silly. As part of the government, watershed management atop hills and institutional waste water management and solid waste management down the valley shall be managed and/or facilitated.” Individual households, hotels and offices should be encouraged to recycle waste water to save subsurface water the level of which is decreasing by the day at high rate. Kathmandu is facing twin problems – limited water supply as well as waste water problem. Tuladhar opines, “The government endorsed Bagmati Action Plan should be implemented under its leadership which will certainly solve the seemingly unmanageable problem because Bagmati is a small river and Kathmandu is a small city in comparison to highly polluted cities like Delhi, Mumbai of India.”

Solid Waste

Dipendra B Oli, legal officer, Solid Waste Management and Resource Mobilisation Centre, Ministry of Local Development, says, “Solid Waste Management (SWM) has been guided by two legislations viz Solid Waste Management and Resource Mobilisation Act which governs the centre and Local Governance Act – Local Governance Act Article 96 Ga 7 which defines that the solid waste should be regulated by the municipality with its responsibilities including collection, transportation and final disposal of waste to the dumping site for Kathmandu valley and providing technical assistance (municipality/HR capacity building and landfill site selection) to the municipalities outside the valley. Daily deals should be handled by the municipality itself as per its jurisdiction whereas construction and maintenance of the landfill site is handled by the centre.” Tuladhar finds a major discrepancy in the Act and says, “We keep hankering after the dumping site but the ground reality is that we should be trying to learn the solid waste management through recycling/reusing. Such practices have been diminishing the value of waste to a higher degree.”

Of late, SWMRMC has started making efforts to recycle SW via different ways but in small scales – composting, vermicomposting, paper recycling and biogas production. Oli opines, “Although it is being done in small scale, their demonstrations will prove that solid waste management can be done at large by improvising them and also the concept that solid waste is a huge problem will change to the point that its solution is present within.” Since solid waste management is haphazard in the major cities of Nepal, SWMRM is attempting to solve it by taking solid waste as resources and utilising it instead of simply dumping via public private partnership and has asked for EOI as per which 11 bidders have been shortlisted. On this front, Oli says, “The government has constructed policies to encourage public to invest upon ventures using solid waste as resources for proper management. Leasing land and rebating taxes on equipments being used for recycling solid waste.” Tuladhar counters, “SWM entrepreneurs have not been getting such facilities and are only confined to the documents. Yet they have been generating substantial amount of income from the business. There are about a dozen entrepreneurs running compost plants of various kinds.” At the parliament has been billed SWM Act 2066 which has not passed yet, the reason Tuladhar points is the lack of priority for the sector. Oli says, “Implementation of the policy is lacking largely due to the lack of the local government, ie, elected local bodies. SWM is not under topmost priority because there are a lot of other problems the country is facing which are in hierarchy eg electricity, education. Still the budget for SWM is increasing year after year but the central budget on solid waste is focused in Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur and Biratnagar as Phase 1 districts.”