25 November 2008
Philippine Alliance Helps Reduce Water Pollution, Diseases
United States supports wastewater treatment and sanitation improvements
Littleton, Colorado — A new low-cost housing development under construction in the Philippines will provide former slum dwellers with proper sewage treatment to protect their health and the environment.
The wastewater treatment system will be installed in Calbayog City on the Philippine island of Samar with assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Philippine Sanitation Alliance (PSA) and the U.S. Navy.
The low-cost, low-maintenance system treats wastewater using an aerobic baffled reactor and cocopeat, a waste material from coconut-husk processing. The treated water can then be used to water plants and flush toilets.
This treatment system is quickly being replicated by other groups that provide housing for the poor, who suffer disproportionately from waterborne diseases caused by untreated sewage, PSA project manager Lisa Kircher Lumbao told America.gov.
To improve sanitation and wastewater treatment in the Philippines, USAID’s Philippine Sanitation Alliance helps local companies adopt low-cost sanitation technology for domestic and commercial waste, helps with financing and encourages the enforcement of sanitation regulations.
PSA helps promote sanitation “to educate the public about sanitation needs and solutions so [people] will support them and be willing to pay fees for the service,” Lumbao said.
PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP
The alliance is a public-private partnership that unites Philippine cities, private companies, business associations, government agencies, U.S. and international nongovernmental organizations and international agencies, including the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program.
“PSA aims to bring together the public and private sectors to achieve a common goal of protecting human and environmental health in the Philippines,” Joy Jochico, USAID’s PSA cognizant technical officer, told America.gov.
Today in the Philippines, little of the domestic sewage, commercial waste and animal waste is treated properly before it flows directly into the ground or into streams, rivers and the ocean.
“Poor sanitation in the Philippines results in 38 million cases of waterborne diseases each year that cause 11,388 deaths annually,” Jochico said, “many of which are children under the age of 5.”
Untreated sewage causes high levels of environmental pollution that leads to degraded coastal areas and contaminated groundwater, she added. “The country's potential to attract tourists is also heavily affected by poor sanitation as untreated sewage is directly discharged to beaches.
“By improving sanitation through our partners,” Jochico said, “PSA hopes to contribute to a reduction in waterborne diseases and also help reduce water pollution that degrades the country's marine and fresh water resources.”
WASTE TO ELECTRICITY
To reduce high levels of pollution flowing into water bodies from chicken and hog farms, PSA promotes the use of a waste-to-energy system that treats animal waste and produces electricity and fertilizer.
On November 15, PSA partner C TRADE, a U.S. renewable-energy development company, inaugurated a treatment system it built on a hog farm in Lipa City, south of Manila.
The system includes a biogas digester that processes animal waste and produces methane. This is used to produce electricity that C TRADE sells to the farm owner at half the regular price. The remaining waste solids are processed into fertilizer and the treated wastewater is reused on the farm for washing stalls.
“This system eliminates pollution, captures a potent greenhouse gas and provides farm owners with water and cheap electricity — truly a win-win solution,” Lumbao said.
More than 200 people attended the inauguration, many of them farm owners interested in replicating the system.
PUBLIC MARKETS
In 2006, as part of an earlier project, USAID provided technical assistance for a model low-cost, low-maintenance wastewater treatment system for a large outdoor public market built by the Muntinlupa City government.
Before the system was constructed, the Muntinlupa Public Market was like many other public markets in the Philippines — 1,235 vendor stalls generated human, animal and food waste. The untreated wastewater polluted a tributary creek of Laguna Lake, an important fishery and source of drinking water.
Now, an underground facility treats the wastewater sufficiently so the water can be reused for flushing toilets and watering plants and the area above the plant can still be used for parking and loading.
The success led five other cities to build similar plants, Lumbao said, and several more are being designed.
ECO-ASIA PROGRAM
PSA also works with USAID’s Environmental Cooperation-Asia (ECO-Asia) Water and Sanitation program, which promotes improved access to clean water and sanitation in Asia’s urban centers.
A focus of the ECO-Asia program is partnership development among Asian cities to build on local expertise and share experiences in sanitation, water-supply utility management and infrastructure financing.
In September, for example, during an ECO-Asia workshop on septage (partially treated waste) management in Sri Lanka, a representative from Marikina City, Philippines, shared the lessons learned about septage management in the Philippines.
As an outgrowth of the ECO-Asia program, USAID recently began working with the International Water Association and the Asian Development Bank to establish an Asia-wide partnership platform called WaterLinks to facilitate water-operator partnerships (utility “twinning”) between Asian water utilities and municipal agencies.
“Interest in building partnerships for improving sanitation services is rising in Asia as decision-makers learn the value of sanitation investments to national health and economic productivity,” John Pasch, USAID regional water policy adviser, told America.gov.
More information is available at the Web sites of PSA and ECO-Asia.
