Routes
Community-based septage management for urban Iloilo water-sourcing
One of the six abstracts, which my friend Victor Prodigo and I will present (as I mentioned in my most recent article for this column) in a scientific meeting on integrated water resources management at the University of the Philippines Diliman this September is titled: "The LINAW - Iloilo City, Philippines Community-based Septage Management: A Motivational and Empowerment Strategy to Rapid Household Level Low-cost Wastewater Treatment and Re-use Awareness." DAAD, the German development agency is expected to be one of the funders of the meeting. The abstract gives focus on the Iloilo urban water situation.
Wastewater treatment and re-use is water-sourcing in the holistic context, and these should achieve a significant measure in rapidly growing urban communities to meet demands and entrench sustainability in urban techno-industry.
I have been with Iloilo City Environment and Natural Resources Officer Engr. Noel Hechanova, Team Leader of LINAW-Iloilo City (LINAW is Local Initiatives for Affordable Wastewater Treatment, a USAID-funded project, which aims to assist local governments to comply with Republic Act 9170 otherwise known as the Clean Water Act of 2002) in not a few hands-on activities related to LINAW. Iloilo City is one of the only four pilot cities of LINAW in the country. The other four are: Dumaguete, Muntinlupa, and Naga -- all obviously urbanized and further urbanized.
Engr. Hechanova has burned our backs in Sunday ocular inspections of the Iloilo River and its tributary the Dungon Creek for project survey. We are (Victor and I) with the LINAW - Iloilo City Committee. It is good to have Victor's Fulbright Master's in International Sustainable Development from Brandeis in Waltham, Massachusetts practiced in the yard of our city.
Now parts of the abstract say:
"At the household level, waste water treatment and re-use remains an incongruous concept. Commercial water purification and distillation are more proximate to the environment consciousness of the majority of the population.
Since watershed rehabilitation and other water-sourcing initiatives are generally inversely proportional to water source deterioration and loss, the awareness of wastewater treatment particularly low-cost wastewater treatment and re-use are given low priority in the more perceptible water campaigns, and the adoption of wastewater technologies has been generally restricted to the commercial level especially to water bottling companies.
Developing low-cost wastewater treatment and re-use technologies should aptly move parallel to water-sourcing technologies.
Appropriate septage and septic management awareness is a quality entry point to build a high-level awareness of increased water supply opportunities as it demands the essential knowledge from Information, Education and Communications (IEC) on the water structures from the hydrologic cycle to the urban wastewater situation.
Project initiative and management will be the role of the grassroots communities, so objectives will now be driven by direct community welfare interest and not by the traditional institutions of governance.
The approach will aim for the mass empowerment of stakeholder-beneficiaries and proactively institutionalize a people-need-and demand direction in development, while the response-actions expected from this community-based septage management will entrench a mass effectual awareness of the water dynamics and the comprehension of the socio-economic advantages of household level low-cost wastewater treatment and re-use technologies."