Potable Water Services Research Articles

Poverty Politics and Governance of Potable Water Services: the Core–Periphery Syntax in Metropolitan Accra, Ghana

In developing countries, increasing urbanization amidst chronic financial constraints sharply limits the authorities’ ability to provide universal urban infrastructural services. This tendency creates complex networks of governance that remains largely understudied and not clearly understood. This article examines this nascent literature, focusing on Metropolitan Accra’s experience through the sustainable development goal lens: “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. Based on the analysis of 26 in-depth interviews with key informants about the current processes, technologies and multiplicities of governance approaches, we demonstrate how the private sector does not only play a significant role in shaping the water dialogue but also has introduced its own modes of governance, which sometimes usurps preferences for public services. Ultimately, differences in procedural legalities and functionalities have spurred (un)healthy competition between the multiple governance modes, spearheaded by the private firms. Concluding, we caution that the multiplicity of management practices devoid of efficient and effective regulatory framework creates indecisive outcomes. Further, we suggest that the development of water-related capacity, both at the individual and institutional levels, will be fundamental in the realization of sustainable development goal 6 by 2030.

The effect of centralisation in local areas of potable water services on microbiological pollution and case rate of acute gastroenteritis infection in water control for potable water: Tekirdağ example

The effect of centralisation in local areas of potable water services on microbiological pollution and case rate of acute gastroenteritis infection in water control for potable water: Tekirdağ example

Remote Sensing and GIS for Surface Water Resources in Rawa Biru – Torasi Merauke Papua

The research describe about surface water ecosystem study in Merauke Papua by using multisource and multistage remote sensing data which was splitted into two parts based on the study areas. First, it is for micro scale spatial analysis focusing on the Rawa Biru – Torasi watershed, while the second is for macro scale spatial analysis for Transfly ecoregionin the floodplain areas of Merauke. Multispectral approach was adopted for Landsat image analysis, followed by field survey on the selected areas. Auxilary data used are maps, secondary documents in order to improve understanding of the areas. Interview and discussion with related institutions (Wasur National Sanctuary, Potable Water Services, Internal Affairs Government, Forestry Service) accordingly were carried out. The research result showed that remote sensing imagery are usefull for surface water resources study. Physical condition of the Rawa Biru – Torasi watershed, vegetation analysis by using multitemporal data, wetland type, hydrological process in the floodplain were presented. Rawa Biru watershed as a resource for drinking water supply environmentaly decreased considerably due to the species invasion, with successively dominated by hydrophilla, tebu rawa, rumput pisau, dan Mellaleuca and sedimentation took place in the main body of swamp. Upper part of the watershed is actually included in the Papua New Guinea, in long water resources development scheme, it need administratively belong to one recharge areas for the watershed.

Efficiency evaluation of urban and rural municipal water service authorities in South Africa: A data envelopment analysis approach

In recent years the local governments in South Africa have faced numerous public protests with regard to service delivery and particularly the provision of basic services such as water and sanitation. In response, South Africa has introduced benchmarking systems (Blue Drop, Green Drop) to improve the quality of potable water and sanitation services. These systems have seen some success; however, the efficiency with which these water services are provided is yet to be assessed. This study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the efficiency with which several South African water service authorities (WSAs), including both metropolitan and local municipalities, provide water services to the public in both urban and rural areas.

Perceptions of Health Communication, Water Treatment and Sanitation in Artibonite Department, Haiti, March-April 2012.

The international response to Haiti’s ongoing cholera outbreak has been multifaceted, including health education efforts by community health workers and the distribution of free water treatment products. Artibonite Department was the first region affected by the outbreak. Numerous organizations have been involved in cholera response efforts in Haiti with many focusing on efforts to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). Multiple types of water treatment products have been distributed, creating the potential for confusion over correct dosage and water treatment methods. We utilized qualitative methods in Artibonite to determine the population’s response to WASH messages, use and acceptability of water treatment products, and water treatment and sanitation knowledge, attitudes and practices at the household level. We conducted eighteen focus group discussions (FGDs): 17 FGDs were held with community members (nine among females, eight among males); one FGD was held with community health workers. Health messages related to WASH were well-retained, with reported improvements in hand-washing. Community health workers were identified as valued sources of health information. Most participants noted a paucity of water-treatment products. Sanitation, specifically the construction of latrines, was the most commonly identified need. Lack of funds was the primary reason given for not constructing a latrine. The construction and maintenance of potable water and sanitation services is needed to ensure a sustainable change.

A proposed water sector plan for the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality (Dr KKDM)

The radical reform of potable water services provisioning by means of promulgation of the Water Services Act 108 of 1997 and the National Water Act 36 of 1998 in South Africa (SA) started a process of addressing the imbalance which existed in how the national resource was distributed. Water is now recognised as a scarce resource that belongs to all the people of the country and consequently it should be managed in an integrated way for social and economic development including future growth (Fuggle and Rabie 2005:293; Riemann, Chimboza and Fubesi 2012:446). The provision of potable water by water services authorities (WSAs) is an important basic service that faces a number of challenges such as the use of out-dated infrastructure and a lack of skilled and knowledgeable people that place overt pressure on demand for service delivery. It is against this background that the researchers have undertaken to investigate how a municipality which is forced to obtain its potable water supply from nearby surface- and groundwater catchments, can manage it in a more effective, efficient, equal, economic and sustainable manner by means of improved planning procedures to enhance co-operative governance and intergovernmental relations.A qualitative research design was used to conduct the study, which included a literature review, semi-structured interviews, non-probability data sampling and scientific analyses of responses. Furthermore, a case-study approach was followed by the researchers, with Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality (Dr KKDM) as the unit of analysis (the locus). The major research finding of the study included that a Water Sector Plan (WSP) was lacking and non-existent in the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality (Dr KKDM) and therefore water services delivery could not be coordinated effectively.

Water services sector reform: the Kosova experience

Governments of countries with emerging economies usually are not very successful in providing safe and sufficient potable water and adequate wastewater services to their citizens. The reasons vary from inadequate institutional structures to chronic under-investment in water infrastructure. To address this, governments embark on reforms based on commonly accepted principles of good governance such as: separation of policy, regulation and service delivery; protecting customer interests; and ensuring financial viability of water utilities and restructuring them so as to benefit from economies of scale and economies of scope. Kosova initiated water sector reforms in 2000 based on five pillars: (i) establishment of a legal and institutional framework, (ii) consolidation of 30 municipal water utilities into seven regional entities, (iii) incorporation in line with corporate governance principles, (iv) establishment of an independent economic regulator and (v) ownership and pushing of reforms by government. The paper describes the challenges encountered in implementing these reforms which, as far as the institutional and legislative framework is concerned, were successfully completed by 2008. Also, the difficulties associated with consolidation of newly created institutions resulting from the reform and defining their roles in the water services sector are described in the paper.

Development-Induced Displacement and Its Impacts on the Livelihoods of Poor Urban Households in Bahir Dar, North Western Ethiopia

This article attempts to explore urban relocation impacts on the livelihoods of poor households displaced by a development project in Bahir Dar city in northwestern Ethiopia. Qualitative methods were used to generate the necessary data. The findings identified that the urban relocation caused a variety of livelihood risks such as loss of home or shelter, lack of urban infrastructures such as road facilities, electricity, job opportunites, potable water services and cash compensation for rehousing, as well as landlessness and separation of small cohesive social groups (notably coffee members). Though IDPs are exposed to various livelihood challenges because of a lack of addressing environmental impact assessment recommendations, those who received housing land are partly happy with owning legally recognised urban land. Currently, IDPs are the owners of the land registered by the municipality. The study urges the need to assess and address the unmet needs of poor urban residents as well as the environmental impact of urban development projects.

La seguridad humana y los problemas colaterales del agua

La seguridad humana se refiere fundamentalmente a la obligación que los gobiernos tienen de asegurar la supervivencia, los medios de vida y la dignidad de sus ciudadanos. La solución de problemas que afectan la población es función de los Estados, en especial los relacionados con servicios públicos que permitan mejorar la calidad de vida. El acceso deficiente al agua potable se ha convertido en la segunda causa de muerte infantil del planeta. Estudios actuales muestran que 1,8 millones de niños mueren al año como consecuencia de graves problemas de salud derivados del consumo de agua insalubre. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo delimitar los alcances del concepto de seguridad humana, avanzando hacia la problemática en cuanto al uso y abastecimiento del agua en el mundo, y la situación que enfrenta Colombia como potencia hídrica de cara la conservación de los páramos y otras fuentes de recursos hídricos, como también en la prestación del servicio de agua potable.

Resilience and Environmental Justice: Potential Linkages

In May 2008, the remote city of Chaiten in Chile was evacuated due to the risk of a volcano eruption. Few days later, severe floods drove to the destruction of the almost entire city. In the months following the disaster, the Government developed projects that failed to relocate the city to a safer location as well as strategies to support the affected population aimed to improve community resilience. Contradictory institutional policies as well as the unforeseen effects of implemented bond schemes have resulted in a highly segregated and environmentally unjust city where public policies. outputs are unevenly distributed. Thus, this paper addresses how some related processes of increasing resilience may impact negatively upon environmental justice, hence exploring a potential inverse relationship between resilience and environmental justice. Five years on, nearly half of the population have returned to Chaiten despite the refusal of the authorities. While northern Chaiten concentrates most of the population and investment, 160 families living in the southern Chaiten bear the lack of potable water and other basic services, and are more vulnerable to future disaster impacts. Split in two due to both geography and policies, Chaiten faces now two realities.

Applying geographic information systems to delineate residential suburbs and summarise data based on individual parcel attributes

Background: Information aggregation to suburb level is of interest to engineers and urban planners. Readily available suburb boundaries do not always correspond to the suburb names recorded for individual properties in different data bases and unwanted errors are inherent. This mismatch of suburb names at different spatial scales poses a particular problem to analysts. As part of a parallel research project into the development of a robust guideline for suburb-based water demand analyses it was necessary to evaluate a large number of suburbs in terms of various attributes, one of which was the total suburb area.Objectives: Suburb boundaries were needed to assess the total suburb area. The objective of this research was to develop a novel geographic information system (GIS) application to delineate suburbs with boundaries corresponding to information contained in another data base comprising individual property records. The suburb boundaries derived in this manner may not relate to municipal boundaries, or sociopolitical boundaries, nor do they have to. The fundamentally correct suburb boundary would be the one encompassing what is perceived to be the suburb based on the suburb name in a particular data base that also contains other interesting attributes, such as water use, of individual properties.Method: The ArcGIS environment was used to delineate suburbs by means of triangulated irregular network (TIN) modelling. Boundaries for suburbs with predominantly residential land use were created that included all residential properties according to the suburb name field as recorded in the treasury system. Other vacant areas were also included so as to obtain the total suburb area. The methodology was developed to assist research in the field of potable water services, but the method presented could be applied to other services that require management of information at suburb level.Results: This article illustrates how a tedious task of suburb delineation could be automated in the GIS environment. The tool prevents subjective results that would be prone to error. The automated procedure described could effectively delineate a large number of predominantly residential suburbs in a relatively short time span and produce repeatable results. A reasonable outline could only be obtained if a sufficient number of parcels in the area contained the same suburb name. Functionality was added to the tool so that a limit could be set for this purpose. The default was that if more than 20% of the records were erroneous it was considered impractical to delineate a suburb. The derived suburb boundaries correspond to useful information in other data bases and would thus enable more effective management of the information.Conclusion: A novel procedure to delineate suburb boundaries in the GIS environment was illustrated in this article. Information at two different spatial scales, namely, individual consumers and suburbs, could be married for the purpose of further research into suburban attributes. The tool was applied as part of a parallel research project to delineate 468 suburbs in this manner, results of which were submitted for publication elsewhere.

Sachet drinking water in Ghana's Accra-Tema metropolitan area: past, present, and future

Population growth in West Africa has outpaced local efforts to expand potable water services, and private sector sale of packaged drinking water has filled an important gap in household water security. Consumption of drinking water packaged in plastic sachets has soared in West Africa over the last decade, but the long-term implications of these changing consumption patterns remain unclear and unstudied. This paper reviews recent shifts in drinking water, drawing upon data from the 2003 and 2008 Demographic and Health Surveys, and provides an overview of the history, economics, quality, and regulation of sachet water in Ghana's Accra-Tema Metropolitan Area. Given the pros and cons of sachet water, we suggest that a more holistic understanding of the drinking water landscape is necessary for municipal planning and sustainable drinking water provision.

On being a pathologist: a brief chronicle of an academic surgical pathologist

I was born in a small rural town of approximately 400 people named La Concordia (The Concord) in Chiapas, a southeastern state of Mexico. My father jokingly used to tell me that a better name for the town would be La Discordia (The Discord) because of trivial matters that the inhabitants often argued and fought over, perhaps because they had few things to keep busy. At that time, La Concordia did not have electricity, potable water, sewage, or medical services. Every year, a medical student in the final year of medical school came to do social service, a requirement for graduation. When I was finishing high school, during my winter vacation, I met Francisco Garcia Gonzales, a senior medical student who was doing his 1-year social service in La Concordia. He was a charismatic highly cultivated young medical student who provided excellent basic medical services and, as a result, gained the respect of the community. He was a firm believer in preventive medicine and vaccinated all children and most adults against small pox. We became friends, and soon I was also his admirer. He influenced me so much that, at that early age, I decided I wanted to be a doctor like him. Years later, in my third year at the National University of Mexico, School of Medicine, I studied pathology with Prof Isaac Costero Tudanca, a highly distinguished pathologist and researcher, an outstanding teacher with a great sense of humor and one of the founders of modern Mexican pathology. He was a key factor in my decision to become

Calculating and Modeling of an Indoor Water Consumption Factor in Mosul City, Iraq

The growth of urban areas and constant need for potable water services, have highlighted the importance of accurate water consumption estimates for effective municipal water services infrastructure planning and design. A clear understanding of the drivers of residential water demand is essential in managing water resources appropriate as potable water. In this paper, a total of (1682) daily household water demand computations were carried out in order to calculate the actual indoor water consumption factor in the city of Mosul. The impacts of specific days of the week family size, water supply continuity and, seasonal variations (winter and summer) on water consumption were also considered. Results revealed that the daily average water consumption factors were (126  65 Lcpd) in a winter season, (235  64 Lcpd) in a summer season and the overall water consumption factor for the area was (180  84 Lcpd). Water consumption was also found to be significantly correlated with explanatory variables. Seasonal variation plays the biggest role in controlling the water consumption factor followed by water supply continuity, then family size (negative effect) and in the last order specific days (weekends). General models to explain the effect of all of these parameters on the per capita water consumption were also derived in this paper.

Preliminary assessment of roof runoff rain water quality for potential harvesting in Bogota´s peri-urban areas

In Colombia, several communities with limited or precarious access to potable water services collect rain water for different domestic uses. This paper presents results of the quality analysis of runoff rainwater on roofs in Kennedy (Bogota) and Soacha (Cundinamarca) in order to evaluate their adaptability to satisfy domestic uses in these districts. Based on the results obtained, it can be conclude that the sampled water is not suitable for none of the possible domestic uses in these communities. This is due to high values of turbidity and high concentrations of Total Suspended Solids, Biochemical Oxygen Demand and heavy metals. Nevertheless, high spatial and temporal variability was detected, as well as variability in function of the roof material. In some of the analyzed samples, the runoff water of the roofs could be adapted as an alternative for domestic uses.

Regulation, Organization and Incentives: The Political Economy of Potable Water Services in Honduras

This case study of urban water and sanitation in Honduras focuses on the perplexing phenomenon of low level equilibrium (LLE). It first seeks to characterize LLE in terms of sector performance and to show how it is propitiated by flawed arrangements for sectoral governance, organization of service delivery and regulation. It then turns to the question of why it is so difficult to escape from LLE. To this end, it analyzes the failure of recent reform efforts, using political economy techniques.

Economic Costs of Water-related Health Problems in Mexico: Deficiencies in Potable Water Services and the Costs of Treatment of Diarrhoeas

The paper provides a quantitative estimate of the economic costs of the health problems, especially diarrhoea, attributable to deficiencies in potable water services in Mexico. It is argued that more financial resources should be allocated to improving and extending potable water and sanitation, lack of which are the principal causes of diarrhoeas.

WATER SUPPLIES FOR AUCKLAND - PREDICT AND PROVIDE OR CONSERVE AND CONTAIN?

Potable water services are provided to the population of 1.2m residents in the Auckland region of New Zealand by one wholesaler and six retailers. Forecasts for water demand suggest that a major new resource will be required by 2025 but that resource has not been identified at this time. Water efficiency techniques could defer this major capital investment. The paper discusses the region's water industry and the strategic investigations into water efficient alternatives to date.

Introduction: Water for Food and Ecosystems: How to Cut which Pie?

Two decades of awareness-raising and dialogues have clearly spelled out the water-related challenges the world is facing. Still, not enough concrete improvements have been realized on key issues, such as the coverage of potable water and sanitation services, and an adequate balance between water for food and ecosystems. Addressing these problems remains a continuous challenge that can only be confronted with an integrated approach, comprising knowledge generation, permanent communication between very different stakeholders, adequate capacity-building and continuous learning, and innovative technology development. With a view to the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico, this contribution reviews such issues, drawing lessons from experience in a program on Water for Food and Ecosystems (funded by Netherlands Partners for Water initiative) and related on-going work in this area carried out by Wageningen University and Research Centre working closely with partner institutions inside and outside the Netherlands. The debate is structured around three key dimensions (i) balancing human and natural values of water, (ii) multiple stakeholder involvement, (iii) technological innovation. Visualized in the Triangle of Sustainability, the study recognizes the advances made in integrating political processes such as multi-stakeholder negotiation in water resource management as a way of achieving a better balance between the values of water, but warn against neglecting the potential for technical advances that can help increasing the size of the ‘cake’ as a whole.

Capacity and transparency of potable water regulation in Tijuana, Mexico: challenges for ensuring water quality at community level.

The ability of public institutions to provide efficient and equitable potable water services is key to reducing water-borne diseases, one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the developing world. In this article, a case study of potable water and public health programs in Tijuana, Mexico, is used to direct attention to practical examples of policy and institutional incapacities. A qualitative methodology was used to gain access to local context and the formal and informal actions of the key informants. This paper concludes that public health agencies are creating the illusion of program action through disease surveillance, however capacity gaps demonstrate that institutional policy is not pragmatically reflected on the local community level. Political client-patron relationships are used to circumvent bureaucratic barriers and distribute resources at the local level. This raises the question of whether further accountability will bring the much-expected equitable distribution of public goods in the developing world.