[A-List] Scorched Earth: the affluent on effluent

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

World must rethink the way it tackles problem of sewage

Paul Brown

Plans to build sewage works for the 1.2 billion people in the world
currently living without fresh water and sanitation should be abandoned,
according to the new president of the World Water Association (WWA), Michael
Rouse. Mr Rouse, a civil servant who was head of Britain's drinking water
inspectorate, believes that sewage pipes are too expensive and too often
drain into and pollute water courses.

Instead, he says, the world should revert to using human solid waste as
compost and fertiliser, and allow liquids to drain into the ground.

These revolutionary ideas come from the man whose job it has been to guard
drinking water quality in the UK since privatisation of the water and sewage
industry. He now heads the body that speaks for professional water
regulators and engineers across the world.

Mr Rouse is not against the United Nations drive to halve the number of
people without fresh water and sanitation by 2015 - a target agreed at the
Earth Summit in Johannesburg last August - but on his calculations this
target means providing these services to 140,000 new people every day, a
huge task that he considers impossible by traditional means.

Mr Rouse believes that instead of grandiose schemes that take years to
implement, there should be a concentration on community-led programmes.
While fresh water could be piped in for drinking, cooking and  washing, new
style, locally made toilets, which separate solid waste from the liquids,
could take care of sanitation. Reed beds or similar natural methods could
clean the water before it is allowed to flow into the ground.

"If we started sanitation again from scratch in Britain, we would not do it
the way we do now," he said. "Instead of flushing and piping all the waste
away, we would collect the solids once a week like household rubbish, take
it to a central depot and compost it.

"Eventually it would be used as fertiliser, itself a bonus in the developing
world, which would be able to cut down on chemical fertilisers."

Mr Rouse believes that without this fundamental change back to simpler
methods, the UN will fail.

To demonstrate that the ideas work, the WWA wants to develop five projects
of dry sanitation in middle income and poor countries within two years - for
settlements of around 100,000 people a time. It says the development of dry
and low water toilets, and urine-separating toilets should be subsidised.

But unlike some campaigners Mr Rouse does not believe water supplies should
be free. Currently, the poorest people in the world pay most for their
water, which is brought by vendors who charge up to 10 times the cost of
piped water for a product of uncertain quality.

He says the key to success of providing water and sanitation is good
government, transparent in its transactions and free from corruption.

The Guardian Weekly 20-3-0424, page 30