This blog originally appeared on Climatelinks.
Climate change worsens familiar challenges to water and sanitation services, including limited access and poor infrastructure. Innovative approaches, such as games to inform sanitation enterprise development, have the potential to catalyze local solutions for sanitation.
On November 18, USAID, in cooperation with the Beni Suef Potable Water and Sanitation Company and Egypt’s Holding Company for Water and Wastewater, inaugurated a wastewater collection system in Beni Suef. The new system will provide services for more than 17,500 households in Beni Suef.
With increasing rates of population growth and urbanization, infrastructure in African cities, such as water delivery systems and wastewater systems, can be overwhelmed. Poor governance, chronic underinvestment and a lack of skilled staff make it difficult for urban water utilities to provide safe drinking water to consumers. However, experience suggests that strong leadership and institutions, coupled with preventative risk-based management approaches and sustained capacity-building efforts, are critical to improving the quality of drinking water services in African cities.
This final report outlines the activities and Small Village Wastewater Treatment Systems (SVWTS) Phase II project in Lebanon (October 2005–July 2012).
In the future, urban areas in the Dominican Republic will face increased risk of severe flooding, sea level rise, higher temperatures, and changes in rainfall patterns. This flooding and uneven rainfall exacerbates wastewater disposal challenges for the 75 percent of the country’s residents who are not connected to regulated wastewater and sewage systems. Large-scale treatment facilities are not feasible given the lack of available land and localization of major settlements, so the Climate Risk Reduction Project “thought small.”
Under the African Urban Poor Improved Water Supply and Sanitation (AUP-IWS) program, USAID/Ghana implemented the Water Access, Sanitation and Hygiene for Urban Poor (WASH-UP) program from 2009 to 2012. WASH-UP started in October 2009 in slum communities of the two major cities of Accra and Takoradi, Ghana.
“I have seen that real change comes from the bottom up, from pressure from society—from good, willing people and action groups who actually put pressure on their governments to change,” says Rolf Luyendijk, executive director of the Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council, in the latest episode of USAID’s Global Waters Radio podcast series. “Linking up with these groups, I think, is critical to get politicians to prioritize investing in sanitation.”
The purpose of this Water Quality Assessment Report is to provide an analysis of the water quality data for the existing Zai Water Treatment Plant (WTP) system, including raw water quality, treated finished water quality, and unit treatment process performance to provide recommendations on treatment process modifications.
SWP’s panel of experts discusses how best to address challenges of poor water quality.
