A comprehensive sustainability index for the assessment of water and sanitation management systems (WSMS) is presented. The index was based on a conceptual framework that perceives sustainability as a combination of territorial, temporal, and personal aspects. A set of sustainability indicators was selected in agreement within this framework, and the ‘Water and Sanitation Sustainability Index’ (WASSI) was built. The WASSI was used to assess the sustainability of the WSMS of the city of Salta, Argentina. Indicators were calculated from information gathered by several means including literature reviews, questionnaires, visits, and participatory workshops. The index was sensitive to detect variations between different aspects of the local WSMS. It was also relatively independent to the quantity and quality of the information available. The WASSI could be a useful tool to assess and improve sustainability of water and sanitation throughout the management systems.
The Water Safety Plan (WSP) for the city of Salta (Argentina) is presented and discussed. To develop this WSP, we used an adapted version of the methodology proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO). The new method included a preliminary weighting procedure to assess the relative importance of different parts of the system, and a more systematic estimation of the magnitude of control measures. These modifications allowed the definition of a variety of risk reduction strategies. The risk assessment step was performed during participatory workshops with members of the local water company. The Initial Risk for the entire system was 30.2%, with variations among processes, subprocesses and components. More than 60% of the hazardous situations identified require control measures to reduce the risk below an acceptable threshold. If all control measures were successfully implemented, the Final Risk could be lowered to 17.7%. Methodological changes introduced allowed a more detailed analysis of the risks and can be an important improvement of the assessment procedure.
Narratives and discourses on issues such as water management and other complex social-ecological systems respond partly to people's worldviews or social perspectives. Knowledge of these perspectives might help increase the rate of success of specific initiatives related to water conservation and could be an important tool to improve water governance. A study performed in the city of Salta, Argentina, revealed the existence of four social perspectives on issues related to water management. Perspectives were obtained with Q methodology by interviewing 29 local stakeholders. Participants sorted 68 statements organized around four themes (service provider; water rights; public participation; water availability) according to their degree of agreement or disagreement. The findings support our contention that there are clear links between social perspectives and the rate of success of some water policies implemented by the local water utility in the past 15 years, in particular the promotion and use of household water meters and awareness campaigns launched to reduce water consumption. We show that the limited success of these initiatives was partly due to ignorance or disregard of social perspectives on water management.
The use of treated, diluted, and even raw domestic wastewater for agricultural irrigation is becoming an essential component of a more sustainable and integrated water resources management, especially in water-scarce regions. More than 20 million hectares are currently being irrigated with wastewater worldwide by about 200 million farmers. This paper provides an overview of some developments in the field of water reuse in agriculture, with a specific focus on Latin America, where this practice is rapidly growing. It also summarizes the benefits and risks of (treated) wastewater irrigation and discusses some of its social, cultural, institutional, and political aspects. The paper also highlights a number of technical, social, environmental, and political challenges that deserve special attention and further research. The use of (treated) wastewater in agriculture has great potential but cannot be dealt with in isolation from local, regional, and global water and sanitation management systems.
A pilot-scale sewage treatment system consisting of two upflow anaerobic sludge bed (UASB) reactors followed by five waste stabilization ponds (WSPs) in series was studied under subtropical conditions. The first UASB reactor started up in only 1 mo (stable operation, high chemical oxygen demand [COD] removal efficiency, low volatile fatty acids concentration in the effluent, alkalinity ratio above 0.7, biogas production above 0.1 Nm3/kg of CODremoved). Removal efficiencies up to 90% were obtained in the anaerobic steps at a hydraulic retention time of 6 + 4 h (80% removal in the first step). Fecal coliform removal in the whole system was 99.9999% (99.94% in anaerobic steps and 99.98% in WSPs). COD balances over UASB reactors are provided. A minimum set of data necessary to build COD balances is proposed. Intermittent sludge washout was detected in the reactors with the COD balances. Sludge washout from single-step UASB reactors should be monitored and minimized in order to ensure constant compliance with discharge standards, especially when no posttreatment is provided. The system combined high COD and fecal coliform removal efficiency with an extremely low effluent concentration, complying with discharge standards, and making it an attractive option for sewage treatment in subtropical regions.
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