Community Based Sewage Treatment through Hybrid Constructed Wetlands System for Improved Heath & Hygiene and for Enhanced Agriculture Productivity / Livelihood Generation in Rural Water Scarce Environments-Pakistan

Abstract

World over, fresh water scarcity problems are growing in scope & complexity to multiple factors, like population growth, climatic impacts, excessive water uses pattern in agriculture. A substantial quantum of treated wastewater , can be made available through constructed wetlands, which can supplement the fresh water scarcity. Almost, 80 % of the total generated raw sewage is being discharged into water bodies or being used for agriculture purposes, specially for vegetable farming, which contributes towards fresh water sources and food chain contamination. Centralized mechanical types of wastewater treatment plants are in use which is capital and recurring costs intensive. Resultantly, due to lack of sufficient recurring finances and energy shortages, these sewage treatment plants become non-operational and un-manageable. Moreover, huge centralized sewage treatment plants are difficult to manage due to longer chain of wastewater collection system and inflexibility of reuse of treated water in the areas of its generation. Therefore, keeping in view these obvious impediments, it was envisaged to plan & implement community based constructed wetlands system for sewage treatment, based on bio and phyto-remediation processes at village Chattal, district Chakwal (an arid area) which is functioning well and being sustained from selling the treated water to farmers and harvesting the various aquatic plants. Temporal analysis was carried out for verification of treatment system efficiency, whereby, monthly wastewater samples were collected at Inlet point (treated water reservoir) and got analyzed for Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) from PCRWR-Islamabad. Analysis report showed significant reduction of COD & BOD i.e. 86.1% & 91.4% respectively which are under permissible limits of Pak-EPA. Aesthetic value of treated water is remarkably improved after treatment as turbidity reduced from 15 NTU to 2 NTU. Detailed Health survey was carried out at village Chattal, to ascertain, the intervention efficiency. The result showed significant reduction in diarrheal & Hepatitis diseases i.e. 92.5% & 40% respectively and substantial improvements was observed in socio-economic, biodiversity and health & environment conditions of the rural population of village Chattal. Pakistan- the study area. This model will prove to be equally good in the rural environments of developing countries, especially in South Asia and Africa.