Moving up the On-Site Sanitation ladder in urban India through better systems and standards

Abstract

Wastewater management predominantly takes the form of On-Site Sanitation (OSS) in low- and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs). In India, households construct and operate OSS systems in the absence of regulatory oversight and seldom in compliance with the national technical standards – posing a risk to water sources and public health. The present paper reviews novel evidence on the quality of these systems from a multi-state survey of 3000 households in India to identify policy and practice interventions for creating sustainable urban sanitation futures. The paper argues for local and national governments to unlock the potential of OSS as a safe and long-term wastewater management solution through (1) re-envisioning the system design to simultaneously meet household and environmental needs, (2) fostering prefabrication of systems as a means to distribute the compliance responsibility optimally, and (3) updating technical standards for facilitating such a paradigm shift.

Managing Non-Sewered Sanitation for Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 in India

“…The sampling design ultimately selected a total of ten cities in these four states as sites of enquiry. Structured interviews with masons, public health engineers/sanitation inspectors, and desludging service providers accompanied the household survey to allow for the triangulation and better contextualisation of the survey findings [9].…”

“…Their spatial density also acts as a critical and limiting factor -with the recommended threshold of spatial density varying in the literature from as low as 16 to 495 units per square kilometres. In India, most cities lie at the higher end of the range and are denser still at the neighbourhood level, rendering the promotion of subsoil dispersion systems an unsuitable option [9]. Therefore, it is imperative that governments move on from viewing subsoil dispersion systems as a simple and appropriate fix to other strategies (Figure 5).…”

The potential contribution of urine source separation to the SDG agenda – a review of the progress so far and future development options

“…36 However, in urban areas with a high population density, these conventional on-site technologies do not produce an effluent with sufficiently high quality to protect the receiving waters, oftentimes groundwater. 22,31,36 For the urban on-site systems in India, Dasgupta et al 36 suggest replacing the prevailing septic tanks with small-scale packet plants. Nitrogen removal in addition to removal of organic matter is certainly possible in such plants.…”

Out of sight, out of mind: Understanding the sanitation crisis in global South cities

“…Where households do not have access to sewers to convey human waste away from the plot, the service chain begins with on-site containment and includes collection, transport, treatment plant, reuse, and disposal ( Nelson and Murray, 2008 ). In many cities, untreated or partially treated human waste is at risk of “leaking” at various points along the sanitation service chain ( Dasgupta et al, 2021 ; Devaraj et al, 2021 ; Mills et al, 2018 ).…”