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

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."

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 .