2 year funding and sanitation

By El Porvenir Posted on Wed 26 Dec 2007, over 18 years ago

Marc,

Have to agree with the others, this is a well laid out project and very ambitious, and a very reasonable request.

1 question, perhaps more for Rajesh and/or Annette - can we approve a 2 year project here? From the budget, the $25K is requested over 2 years about $12850 per year. If you ask me, I am all for it, just wondering about this since it is different from the other projects I have seen here online in this round.

Not a question for now, but maybe in your next projects, you might want to quantify the community contribution, or at least make a rough guess. It is nice to see the community side, and volunteer labour definitely has value.

A couple of questions for you though. I see that 12000 people are getting water and 7500 people sanitation - are the 7500 getting water (are they included in the 12000)? Do the 4500 (assuming they are included) not getting sanitation already have access? Or is there are future plan to reach those people? (maybe you have already answered that with Rajesh's question)

How do you select the communities where you are going to work?

Wow, communal latrines - how do you get people to coordinate the cleaning/maintenance? Before my time here, I think we tried that and had many problems with the coordination on the cleaning and maintenance. With communal water projects, seems to be no problem (most of the time), but with sanitation, I hear, it was problematic...

Rob

Access

By CARE Posted on Tue 18 Dec 2007, over 18 years ago

Looks like a good program. I'm not sure how busy this area is, but how do you ensure that the people who access the water have paid the annual fee?

Access

By Protos Posted on Wed 19 Dec 2007, over 18 years ago

Getting Water User Associations always paying their fee, is an action to get fixed early 2008. This will be set up on a district level in conjunction with the District Water and Sanitation Committee, the technical support unit of Directorate of Water Development ( state organisation ), local authorities and local NGO's working with us on this programme.

Various

By East Meets West Foundation Posted on Wed 19 Dec 2007, over 18 years ago

The overall purpose of the proposed project (providing clean water services to 12,000 people and sanitation facilities to 7,500 people), thereby eliminating considerable a amount of potential pollutants (human feces, wastewater, and grey water) directly into the lake, certainly seems to be a reasonable and potentially worthy goal for BPR funding. Also of note is the fact that the implementing agency’s own co-financing, which is more than more than half a million USD, with the proposer is only applying for the relatively modest BPR amount of $26,000. This amount of proposed self-financing is unusually high and should be strongly encouraged amongst other people requesting BP are financing.
Financing/Cost Issues:

1) Overall Financing: The proposed total cost estimate of $538,573 means that the combined per capita costs for water and sanitation services is about $45 US. There is quite a mix of water supply technologies being proposed for this project, including improved shallow wells, spring catchments and rainwater catchment tanks, assuming that about 80% of the cost is for water ($36 per capita) and the remaining 20% is for sanitation ($9 per capita), and assuming that the construction is for good quality pour flush sanitary toilets with septic tanks, the costs appear somewhat low. To what extent are the proposed beneficiaries going to be required to co-finance the new infrastructure?

2) Latrine costs -Seem a bit on the low side. Typically a good quality pour-flush latrine with septic tanks with some privacy infrastructure will run about $100 in most Asian countries, but I am not familiar with African prices. $10 per head for shallow wells is not unreasonable. Similarly, $2,000 for 250 people ($8 per capita) for spring catchments (depending upon the length of pipe from the spring catchment to the distribution system with the service area) with a storage tank is also a reasonable price, depending upon whether or not any water treatment would be required. An appropriate cost for rainwater catchment tanks is difficult to say, largely because the size and therefore the cost is very dependent upon the actual amount of rainwater that can be reliably plan for, a figure with which I am not familiar.

3) Operation and Maintenance and Repair: The spreadsheet describing the estimated program costs does not appear to include any reference to operation and maintenance and repair costs for water supply facilities, unless that is the item labeled “General Functioning”. Who will be responsible for the operation, maintenance and repair, who will be responsible for training those persons, and where will the money come to finance those activities?
4) Water Operational Costs - Following from the previous paragraph, is there any intention to require water users to make any contributions whatsoever towards the long term operation and maintenance there replacement and potentially extension costs of the piped water systems, or the rainwater catchment systems?

Technical Issues:

1) Water Quality - There is no apparent mentioned of water quality issues in the proposal. This can be especially problematic given the fact that they the water sources are low capacity dugwells, the quality of which may not yet have been determined. This is certainly something that should be done before any final decision is made to implement this project. Is it not possible to provide greater percentage of the project beneficiaries with piped groundwater or spring water that would be treated before delivery to the beneficiaries?

2) Environmental Impact: The benefits of this project go well beyond the basic provision of water supply and sanitation services, to also include the potentially significant environmental benefits that would accrue by avoiding direct wastewater discharge into the lake itself.

3) School Water and Sanitation: There appears to be no mention of any school children getting water. I would assume that if there are any schools in the area, they would certainly be able to obtain water from one or more of the water systems that are being financed under the project. At minimum, there should be some protected dug wells available at all schools within the proposed project area. It should be required that all schools within the proposed project area have proper latrines (separated into girls and boys sections) that are easily accessible by both students and teachers.

Post Construction Management – Is it quite clear who will be responsible for managing and maintaining all these facilities for the next ten years or more?
Other than those issues, the project seems to be a reasonable use of BPR funds, but it would be helpful to more specifically address the long term financial sustainability issues mentioned above.

Various

By Protos Posted on Thu 20 Dec 2007, over 18 years ago

Rick, thanks for your positive and critical reflections. Here are some answers on your questions.
1. Overall financing. About half of the General functioning and Staff costs in the budget are foreseen for setting up an integrated water ressources plan for the Lake George cathment area: cfr our R3 and R4 objectives of the program. Your calculation on average cost by beneficiary results by that at the high side. Beneficiaries are not asked to invest money in building the infrastructure; they are simply too poor in that area of Uganda. If they can, they provide local materials and manpower, but this is not quantified in the total cost of our program.
2. Latrine costs: the majority of infrastructure we will put is of the dry ECOSAN type latrines ( because the ground water level near the lake is quite high). They will mainly be put near public places: landing sites of fishermen, market places, schools... These are rather expensive 4-persons latrines in the area of 2000$ per piece. We count an average of 200 people making use of 1 public latrine. Besides that, we are developping with local people a lower cost ECOSAN latrine with cheaper materials, which we build near their home as "demo" places. Locals can/will copy the design and produce them theirselves near their home.
3. Operation and maintenance/ water operational costs: is not foreseen in our budget. However, we are making sure with local WUC's, our local partner NGO's JESE and Forud, with local authorities and state authorities DWD that people will pay a contribution per jerrycan tapped water, or a yearly fee for using improved springs, to cover the operation and maintenance costs for the next 10 years. This is being set up now at district level. Training how to operate and how to maintain is foreseen in our program, as well as the initial set of spareparts per infrastructure.
The program foresees also construction of cheap rainwater harvesting tanks and training how to construct them, which can later be copied by local people.
Local partner NGO's will be able to pick up the technology how to construct improved wells. They can multiply, if local communities can raise enough money later on.
4. Water quality. Our engineer has water quality test equipment. He will train our local partner NGO's how to use that. A quality monitoring system per pump and per improved spring is being set up. Piped groundwater system is not an option for this area: farmers living too spread around the hilly country , and fishermen near the lake living too far from safe springs.
5. Schools: are foreseen in the program, as well for water as for latrines.