Integrated solution for water and sanitation

Integrated solution for
water and sanitation

This refers to a UNB report on experts’ views regarding the solution of city water and sanitation problems in an integrated manner. The basic idea is to recycle the sanitation waste into potable water as practised in Singapore which has a totalitarian type of administration with strict control on everything. Further, Singapore has the reputation of having one of the highest quality standards in the world based on strict and uncompromising technical discipline.
This is something totally foreign to our culture where quality control is just to stay on the right side of the specification one way or the other. Bending rules and shortcuts is the order of the day of Bangladeshi style of technical discipline. Given these facts of life integrating water supply and sanitation, which is recycling sanitation liquids into potable water, may well lead to catastrophic health hazard in Bangladesh. I believe it will be far safer and saner for us to keep the two separate for our overall health safety.
The pragmatic and realistic approach could be to go for large-scale biogas plant managed in industrial scale from the sanitation fluids and sewage. The final biogas digester solids may be mixed with suitable dried and shredded solid refuse and wastes, mixed with oil refinery sludge to make fuel cakes. This could be a realistic option given our shortage of local fuel resources.
In my opinion, integration of water supply with recycled sanitation waste is a dangerous health proposition for the country in real terms although it is theoretically viable and justified. WASA’s water supply system that we have is bacteriologically and physically (suspended and dissolved impurities) as poor as it can be. The first and important objective is to ensure that WASA water is really safe to drink straight off the tap unless you have developed built-in immunity to intestinal bacterial infection.
SA Mansoor
Dhaka