Like many big cities in the developing world, the city of Jakarta, with a population of nine million people, is struggling to provide clean water to all its residents. In some poor neighborhoods international organizations like Mercy Corps and its Communal Master Meter project (small community-managed piped water system), are trying to help. However, their impact is minimal because the infrastructure problems are so complex and expensive to fix.
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Stopping private investments in borewell digging and institutionalising community level participatory groundwater monitoring systems are two suggested measures to halt unsustainable groundwater use in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The Special Commissioner for Rural Development proposes these measures in “Managing Groundwater with Sustainability and Equity” a draft discussion note.
Alarmed at the unsustainable groundwater usage in farming and the resulting public distress, the Andhra Pradesh government is working on legislation to remedy the situation. The legislation is likely to be in the form of an upgrade to the current AP Water Land and Trees Act (WALTA).
Another background discussion note is an “Inventory of Norms and Other Regulatory Instruments for Groundwater“.
See also: Rene van Lieshout, Andhra Pradesh: shift to adaptive managing water demand needed, Source Bulletin, Aug 2009
Source: India Water Portal, 31 Jul 2010
A study conducted by a strategic policy group has blamed the overlapping functions of at least 12 major government agencies over the management of water as the main cause of a looming crisis that has already hit Metro Manila and other areas of the country.
Forensic Law and Policy Strategies Inc. (Forensic Solutions) – a think tank offering services in the fields of policy, law reform, advocacy and governance – said that despite the abundance of water, the country is now suffering from a water shortage due to fragmented management of available resources.
An administration lawmaker pushed [on 13 August 2010] for the inclusion of bottled drinking water in the list of “basic necessities” under The Price Act, to protect the public against hoarding and profiteering during severe shortages, calamities and similar emergencies.
“Due to harsh climate change, the lack of essential water resources in general and safe drinking water in particular is bound to worsen in the months ahead,” Pasig City Rep. Roman Romulo said in a statement.
Whenever clean water becomes scarce due to a prolonged dry spell, or as an offshoot of widespread flooding, bottled drinking water would be highly susceptible to illegal price manipulation, he said.
Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal of India’s Himachal Pradesh state [pop. 6 million] announced on 13 August 2010 that the state government would be considering recruitment of local water guards on a part-time basis to manage the drinking water supply schemes in different parts of the state.
The Chief Minister said this while presiding over the review meeting of the Irrigation and Public Health Department.
He said the recruitment would generate employment to about 5,000 rural youths besides ensuring regular supply of water to the people and also maintenance of the schemes.
Japan has an unlikely new export product: the sewage it normally dumps into rivers or the sea. The first buyer is the Australian mining industry. Could this also become a new money earner for developing countries? Well, no. The “export quality” sewage in question is effluent from high-tech Japanese wastewater treatment plants.
An innovative trade experiment will take place in the autumn of 2010. Australian ships with iron ore for Japan, will return, not with seawater in their ballast tanks, but with highly treated sewage water.
Australia is facing a water shortage and mines need a lot of (expensive) water for their operations. If all goes well, the cost of Japan’s sewage water will be less than the AU$ 4 to AU$5 (US$ 3.50 – US$ 4.40) per ton that the mining companies currently have to pay.
Companies involved in the experiment, including Hitachi Plant Technologies Ltd., plan to start sewage water exports on a commercial basis in fiscal 2012. The state of Western Australia, home to major mining companies such as Rio Tinto, has agreed to cooperate in the experiment.
In Japan, about 14 billion tons of treated sewage water is produced every year, but only 1.5 percent of the amount was reused in 2007.
Source: Dai Narusawa, Asahi Shimbun, 07 Jul 2010
The massive increase of animal waste coming from the livestock industry has become a main source of water pollution in the country, environmental researchers have warned.
One measure China is introducing to reduce the pollution is through the construction of 80 million household methane digesters and 10,000 large-scale biogas plants by 2020.
Citing China’s first national census of pollution sources released in February [2010], Zhang Qingfeng, a leading water resources management expert at the Asian Development Bank, said agriculture is responsible for up to 67 percent of the 423,200 tons of phosphorus discharged and 57 percent of the 4.7 million tons of nitrogen discharged into water.
Posted in China, Water quality
Tagged agricultural wastewater, algae, animal excreta, biogas, blue-green algae, surface water pollution
[In the first week of the crisis, Oxfam was] delivering clean water to almost 100,000 people made homeless by catastrophic flooding in Pakistan.
In four of the worst affected areas of the Khyber Paktankhwa (formally NWFP) and Punjab Province, Oxfam and partners [repaired] damaged water systems and trucking drinking water to those stranded or displaced from their homes.
Oxfam’s Country Director Neva Khan said:
“We are providing water purification sachets to people who are reduced to drinking from ponds and dirty standing water. At the same time, we are training people on how to clean the water and how to stay as hygienic as possible in such a chaotic and dangerous environment.”
A new report [1] by Arghyam highlights the outcomes of research and discussions on the experiences of civil society organisations involved in implementing sustainable sanitation campaigns in India.
Several concerns were raised during the discussions on the the manner in which the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was being implemented, followed by identification of steps that were needed to ensure social, technical, institutional, financial and environmental sustainability of the programme.
Water for All Asia Pacific
