| Abstract | Environment management is a significant challenge in developing countries mainly due to lack of strong legislation to control wastewater and institutional capacity for integrated planning and management. This paper describes the importance of small scale decentralized wastewater treatment using reed bed treatment systems (RBTS) in
Nepal. It shows how public/community participation can support small scale construction work while ensuring checks on quality and price of construction. It includes examples where this system provides good quality, low-cost services. Environmental Public Health Organisation (ENPHO) introduced the system in Nepal through research and then by designing and constructing a pilot-scale wastewater treatment system in Dulikhel Hospital in 1997. Since then this has been followed by 13 such systems at various institutions (e.g. hospitals, schools, university, and monastery) and individual households. The system is found to be highly effective in removing pollutants such
as suspended particles, ammonia-nitrogen, BOD, COD and pathogens. With the experience of designing the system and more than eight years of monitoring and
evaluation of the system, the challenge was to upscale this technology to a community scale. To overcome this challenge a community scale wastewater treatment system was designed for Madhaypur Thimi Municipality, a first of its kind in Nepal. As the local people in Madhaypur Thimi Municipality showed interest in wastewater treatment, ENPHO with support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), UN-Habitat and WaterAid Nepal (WAN) constructed a wastewater treatment system in Sunga area. The treatment plant has the capacity to treat 50m3 of wastewater per day. The local community has formed a committee for construction and future O&M of the RBTS. This
RBTS will set a valuable precedent for other larger systems in other parts of the country as well as systems envisaged under national urban development projects in Nepal, such as the Urban Environment Improvement Project. [authors abstract] |
