Novel schemes include a plan to build an artificial wetland at a jail in Mombasa in Kenya, to process sewage from 4,000 inmates that now flows untreated into a creek, or ponds in South Africa where algae purify waste and are then used as fertiliser.

"About 90 per cent of the sewage and 70 per cent of the industrial waste in developing countries are being discharged untreated into water courses," said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

"Understanding the ability of peatlands, of marshes, of wetlands, to play an integral part in filtering … waste water is often overlooked," he said.

The UN set a millennium goal of halving the proportion of people with no access to sanitation – even simple latrines rather than sewers – by 2015 from 40 per cent of humanity or 2.6 billion people now.

"Africa is probably struggling the most," Mr Steiner said.

France’s Veolia, the world’s biggest listed water supplier, says East Asia and the Pacific are progressing best.

In Africa, the company’s only big contract so far is to supply water and sanitation to three cities in Morocco, with investments totalling 2.2 billion euros ($3.66 billion).

 

Children dying

"A lot of countries underestimate the effect of sanitation on health," said Pierre Victoria, head of International Institutional Relations at Veolia Water.

UN data show a child dies as a result of poor sanitation every 20 seconds – that is 1.5 million preventable deaths a year from diseases such as diarrhoea or cholera.

In many countries "we are disappointed by the lack of interest of the politicians about water issues," Mr Victoria said.

"We’d like to have new contracts in developing countries but we need contractual, legal and financial security."

Proper sewers, with pipelines and treatment plants, are prohibitively costly for many nations.

Among lower-cost projects, prisoners at the Shimo La Tawa jail in Mombasa in Kenya will soon start work on an artificial wetland where plants will act as a sewage processing plant in an experimental $126,000 scheme.

"This technology costs very little both for construction and maintenance," said Peter Scheren, manager of joint UNEP-Global Environment Facility projects in Africa.

The scheme will also include a fish farm – fed by waste water purified by two artificial wetlands each 55 metres long, nine wide and two deep.

If it works, the fish can be eaten by prisoners, or even sold.

Such wetlands can have other spinoffs.

"There are experiments going on in Tanzania where types of grass for roof thatching and baskets weaving are grown on wetlands," Mr Scheren said.

 

Natural systems

Many scientists say natural systems, such as wetlands, forests or mangroves, are worth more left alone rather than cleared for farmland because they supply free services such as food, water purification or building materials.

"For sanitation it’s much better to get nature on your side," said Dag Hessen, a biology professor at Oslo University.

Mr Steiner also said the world urgently needs a better understanding of the natural water cycle, under threat from climate change stoked by human use of fossil fuels, to help manage water from rains to drains.

Global warming may aggravate water shortages for hundreds of millions of people, for instance by disrupting Africa’s monsoons or by thawing Himalayan glaciers whose seasonal meltwater now feeds crops from China to India.

UN estimates show it would cost only about $10.8 billion a year to reach the 2015 sanitation target and that every dollar spent on sanitation creates spinoffs worth $7.59 on average, largely because of less disease.

A 2006 UN Human Development Report said rich donor nations gave about 5 per cent of total overseas aid, or between $3.25 billion and $4.3 billion a year, to water and sanitation.

Excluding big investments in Iraq, the recent trend was down.

Many donors view water investments as too risky, partly because of problems of accountable financing, it said, adding that sanitation progress since the 1970s had been "glacial".

Yet many firms stand to benefit from a focus on water and sanitation.

Goldman Sachs sees prospects for growth in the water sector, from drinking water to processing waste.

 

Infrastructure costs

In rich nations such as the United States, upgrading water and wastewater infrastructure should bring 4-5 per cent growth and in markets such as China, new infrastructure should mean 10-15 per cent growth over 5-10 years, it said in a December 2007 report.

"Longer term, we expect the global water sector to surge towards a global water oligopoly, where the market for water equipment and services will be dominated by a few multi-industry companies, including General Electric, ITT Industries, Danaher and Siemens," the report said.

Suez, an international industrial and services group, says it has had successes in cities such as Buenos Aires, Casablanca, Jakarta, and La Paz.

In the 13 years to 2006, it estimates it has helped connect 5.3 million people to a sanitation network.

One headache is how to pass on the cost of upgrades.

"New systems are often under-funded. So the connections go often to the rich or medium-income households and the poor do not get it," said Helen Mountford, head of the Environmental Outlooks division at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

With the world’s population growing, any advances in improving sanitation may be only helping the world stand still.

The OECD said this month that more than 5 billion people or 67 per cent of the world’s population, are expected to be without a connection to public sewerage in 2030.

That is up by 1.1 billion from 2000, when 71 per cent of a smaller world population had no connection.

About 1.1 billion people lack drinking water – another millennium goal is to halve that proportion by 2015.

"Investments in sanitation if anything have to be more urgent than for water because the deficit is double," OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria said.

French 19th Century author Victor Hugo wrote in Les Miserables that "the history of men is reflected in the history of sewers".

"The sewer is the conscience of the city… A sewer is a cynic – it tells everything."

– Reuters

"The land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in the place. . . . It is like dynamite — it is poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it," said Ren Bingyan, a professor at the School of Material Sciences at Hebei Industrial University.

The situation in Li’s village points to the environmental trade-offs the world is making as it races to head off a dwindling supply of fossil fuels.

Forests are being cleared to grow biofuels like palm oil, but scientists argue that the disappearance of such huge swaths of forests is contributing to climate change. Hydropower dams are being constructed to replace coal-fired power plants, but they are submerging whole ecosystems under water.

Likewise in China, the push to get into the solar energy market is having unexpected consequences.

With the prices of oil and coal soaring, policymakers around the world are looking at massive solar farms to heat water and generate electricity. For the past four years, however, the world has been suffering from a shortage of polysilicon — the key component of sunlight-capturing wafers — driving up prices of solar energy technology and creating a barrier to its adoption.

With the price of polysilicon soaring from $20 per kilogram to $300 per kilogram in the past five years, Chinese companies are eager to fill the gap.

In China, polysilicon plants are the new dot-coms. Flush with venture capital and with generous grants and low-interest loans from a central government touting its efforts to seek clean energy alternatives, more than 20 Chinese companies are starting polysilicon manufacturing plants. The combined capacity of these new factories is estimated at 80,000 to 100,000 tons — more than double the 40,000 tons produced in the entire world today.

But Chinese companies’ methods for dealing with waste haven’t been perfected.

Because of the environmental hazard, polysilicon companies in the developed world recycle the compound, putting it back into the production process. But the high investment costs and time, not to mention the enormous energy consumption required for heating the substance to more than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit for the recycling, have discouraged many factories in China from doing the same. Like Luoyang Zhonggui, other solar plants in China have not installed technology to prevent pollutants from getting into the environment or have not brought those systems fully online, industry sources say.

"The recycling technology is of course being thought about, but currently it’s still not mature," said Shi Jun, a former photovoltaic technology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Shi, chief executive of Pro-EnerTech, a start-up polysilicon research firm in Shanghai, said that there’s such a severe shortage of polysilicon that the government is willing to overlook this issue for now.

"If this happened in the United States, you’d probably be arrested," he said.

An independent, nationally accredited laboratory analyzed a sample of dirt from the dump site near the Luoyang Zhonggui plant at the request of The Washington Post. The tests show high concentrations of chlorine and hydrochloric acid, which can result from the breakdown of silicon tetrachloride and do not exist naturally in soil. "Crops cannot grow on this, and it is not suitable for people to live nearby," said Li Xiaoping, deputy director of the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences.

Wang Hailong, secretary of the board of directors for Luoyang Zhonggui, said it is "impossible" to think that the company would dump large amounts of waste into a residential area. "Some of the villagers did not tell the truth," he said.

However, Wang said the company does release a "minimal amount of waste" in compliance with all environmental regulations. "We release it in a certain place in a certain way. Before it is released, it has gone through strict treatment procedures."

Yi Xusheng, the head of monitoring for the Henan Province Environmental Protection Agency, said the factory had passed a review before it opened, but that "it’s possible that there are some pollutants in the production process" that inspectors were not aware of. Yi said the agency would investigate.

In 2005, when residents of Li’s village, Shiniu, heard that a new solar energy company would be building a factory nearby, they celebrated.

The impoverished farming community of roughly 2,300, near the eastern end of the Silk Road, had been left behind during China’s recent boom. In a country where the average wage in some areas has climbed to $200 a month, many of the village’s residents make just $200 a year. They had high hopes their new neighbor would jump-start the local economy and help transform the area into an industrial hub.

The Luoyang Zhonggui factory grew out of an effort by a national research institute to improve on a 50-year-old polysilicon refining technology pioneered by Germany‘s Siemens. Concerned about intellectual property issues, Siemens has held off on selling its technology to the Chinese. So the Chinese have tried to create their own.

Last year, the Luoyang Zhonggui factory was estimated to have produced less than 300 tons of polysilicon, but it aims to increase that tenfold this year — making it China’s largest operating plant. It is a key supplier to Suntech Power Holdings, a solar panel company whose founder Shi Zhengrong recently topped the list of the richest people in China.

Made from the Earth’s most abundant substance — sand — polysilicon is tricky to manufacture. It requires huge amounts of energy, and even a small misstep in the production can introduce impurities and ruin an entire batch. The other main challenge is dealing with the waste. For each ton of polysilicon produced, the process generates at least four tons of silicon tetrachloride liquid waste.

When exposed to humid air, silicon tetrachloride transforms into acids and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas, which can make people who breathe the air dizzy and can make their chests contract.

While it typically takes companies two years to get a polysilicon factory up and running properly, many Chinese companies are trying to do it in half that time or less, said Richard Winegarner, president of Sage Concepts, a California-based consulting firm.

As a result, Ren of Hebei Industrial University said, some Chinese plants are stockpiling the hazardous substances in the hopes that they can figure out a way to dispose of it later: "I know these factories began to store silicon tetrachloride in drums two years ago."

Pro-EnerTech’s Shi says other companies — including Luoyang Zhonggui — are just dumping wherever they can.

"Theoretically, companies should collect it all, process it to get rid of the poisonous stuff, then release it or recycle. Zhonggui currently doesn’t have the technology. Now they are just releasing it directly into the air," said Shi, who recently visited the factory.

Shi estimates that Chinese companies are saving millions of dollars by not installing pollution recovery.

He said that if environmental protection technology is used, the cost to produce one ton is approximately $84,500. But Chinese companies are making it at $21,000 to $56,000a ton.

In sharp contrast to the gleaming white buildings in Zhonggui’s new gated complex in Gaolong, the situation in the villages surrounding it is bleak.

About nine months ago, residents of Li’s village, which begins about 50 yards from the plant, noticed that their crops were wilting under a dusting of white powder. Sometimes, there was a hazy cloud up to three feet high near the dumping site; one person tending crops there fainted, several villagers said. Small rocks began to accumulate in kettles used for boiling faucet water.

Each night, villagers said, the factory’s chimneys released a loud whoosh of acrid air that stung their eyes and made it hard to breath. "It’s poison air. Sometimes it gets so bad you can’t sit outside. You have to close all the doors and windows," said Qiao Shi Peng, 28, a truck driver who said he worries about his 1-year-old son’s health.

The villagers said most obvious evidence of the pollution is the dumping, up to 10 times a day, of the liquid waste into what was formerly a grassy field. Eventually, the whole area turned white, like snow.

The worst part, said Li, 53, who lives with his son and granddaughter in the village, is that "they go outside the gates of their own compound to dump waste."

"We didn’t know how bad it was until the August harvest, until things started dying," he said.

Early this year, one of the villagers put some of the contaminated soil in a plastic bag and went to the local environmental bureau. They never got back to him.

Zhang Zhenguo, 45, a farmer and small businessman, said he has a theory as to why: "They didn’t test it because the government supports the plant."

Researchers Wu Meng and Crissie Ding contributed to this report.

A report from the Murray Darling Basin Commission released in March 2008 shows that the huge rains in January did  very little to relieve the long-term challenges faced by the drought stricken river system. The total inflows to the river over the last two years are the lowest since 1937. The two year total to December 2007 was 3,350 gigalitres, which is 15 per cent of the average.

The lack of water in the system as a whole, means that even though good rains in January have relieved local shortages, the reserves downstream of Burke have experienced a small or zero increase in storages. The amount of water in the Menindee Lakes has risen to 550 gigalitres, which is 35 per cent of the total capacity. 100 gigalitres has been released for downstream use.

The commission reports that farmers will get a backlog of emergency water that was denied them over summer, but will start the year with no allocations. The situation will be reviewed depending on winter and spring rains. No extra water will be released from the Hume and Dartmouth wiers.

The high salinity and acidity of the river in South Australia will continue to be a problem with no relief in sight. The full report is available from the commission’s website . 

Read it at The Herald  

A STATE of permanent transport gridlock is threatening to choke Sydney as it grows by a forecast 1.1 million people over the next 20 years.

The Iemma Government has released draft targets for each local government area to house the population boom, promising that $7.5 billion in road and rail infrastructure, bus services, open space, schools and health facilities will follow.

Under the draft plans compiled for the Government’s Metropolitan Strategy, 600,000 new dwellings will be built by 2031. The City of Sydney heads the list for the number of new dwellings with 55,000. A further 248,000 will be built in nine western Sydney council areas.

A number of prominent community leaders warn that the figures raise serious concerns about the ability of Sydney’s road and public transport network to cope.

The president of the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, Tony Hay, said the city needed additional rail lines and bus corridors, and a substantial increase in service frequencies, if it were not to descend into transport gridlock.

"While over 100 kilometres of motorway, mostly in the form of toll roads, have been built in western Sydney, the rail systems coverage is still much the same as it was in the steam era," he said.

"The result is a region that is heavily car-dependent – a problem that will only get worse as the population both increases and ages.

"In response the State Government has built two bus transitways and announced plans for the construction of the urgently needed north-west and south-west rail links. However, the north-west rail link is under threat from an unholy coalition of inner-city metro enthusiasts, road advocates and cost-cutting treasury officials."

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the development was welcome but warned it must be accompanied by investment in community facilities and infrastructure.

"The State Government must provide the transport, hospitals and schools to support the increase [when needed], not 10 years later," she said.

NRMA president Alan Evans said the Government needed to give a commitments to its road network expansion and public transport plans.

"People just want to see action," he said.

A Department of Planning spokesman said the draft 25-year strategy and the Government’s 10-year, $110 billion State Infrastructure Strategy would be updated over time.

"Housing growth in existing areas will in the main be clustered within and nearby existing centres – quarantining 80 per cent of suburban streets from increased density," he said. "Furthermore, the strategy proposes to increase the rate of greenfield land to be released on Sydney’s fringe, in particular in the growth centres."