Abstract
The provision of communal water and sanitation facilities has been mandated by the South African Government as an interim measure for informal settlement upgrading. These services form the first step in the upgrading process and are essential in meeting the basic needs of the community. The eThekwini municipality is rolling out community ablution blocks to informal settlements throughout their jurisdiction. This paper investigates the water demand characteristics of these community ablution blocks, and provides a detailed methodology for collecting the data, which provides the 15-minute peak and average water demand. The results from January to November 2012 indicate that the majority of the water supply (60%) is used for laundry purposes, which includes the water used in the laundry basins and from the tap for off-site consumption, while the water demand for toilet flushing accounts for 16% of the total water supply from each facility. The peak and average water demand can be used for future hydraulic modelling of these, and other, communal ablution facilities. Keywords : informal settlements; communal sanitation; hydraulic modelling
Highlights
Sanitation is a basic need and the lack of improved facilities has significant effects on environmental and public health, with detrimental knock-on socio-economic impacts
The estimated household (HH) consumption is shown in Table 3 for the north area (CAB 5) and south area (CAB 1, community ablution blocks (CABs) 2 and CAB 3) and the entire Frasers settlement, with an average water demand of 82 l∙HH-1d-1
The number of people per household was not confirmed through a census survey of the whole settlement, the results from a representative sample of 147 households found an average of 2.2 people per household (Okem et al, 2012). This value provides an estimated average water demand of 37 l∙c-1d-1. This value is consistent with the CAB water demand of 35–40 l∙c-1d-1 (Roma et al, 2010)
Summary
Sanitation is a basic need and the lack of improved facilities has significant effects on environmental and public health, with detrimental knock-on socio-economic impacts. In South Africa, every person has a right to access basic water and sanitation services (DWAF, 1994). The minimum sanitation standards in South Africa have been provided by the National Government (DWAF, 2001). These standards are defined rather broadly, enabling local authorities to choose their preferred implementation technology based on local conditions and institutional capacity. The technology choices include dry sanitation, low-flush, and full waterborne sanitation. The most appropriate sanitation technology for an informal settlement must provide a socially and environmentally acceptable level of service with full health benefits, whilst being financially viable (Schouten and Mathenge, 2010). Despite the benefits of using dry sanitation, waterborne sanitation still remains the aspiration of inhabitants of poor informal settlements (Roma and Buckley, 2011)
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