Rural water supply and water demand ... - Up To - SOPAC

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1.1 General [9] Water Demand Management and Rural Water Supply Traditionally WDM projects focus on urban water supply systems apparently for very obvious reasons: • Urban water supplies are run by a more or less professionally-organised agency/ utility hence there is a defined recipient and partner for any project. • The size of most urban water supply systems generate significant distribution costs and in some cases also significant revenues. That allows for relatively straightforward costbenefit-analysis of WDM measures. • Urban water supply systems usually, and rather unfortunately, also 'generates' significant leakage levels making it easier to achieve success. • Water supply problems in urban areas rapidly affect a large number of people making it more pressing to the water utility/ Government to overcome or anticipate such problems. • Influential people, locals or foreigners, usually reside in urban areas and push for providing an efficient and safe water supply (and sanitation). • Urban areas usually offer a more receptive audience for public awareness campaigns since they can be considered pure cash-economies. Rural water supply systems, in contrast, present entirely different problems: • They are small often with a design flow lower than 1 l/s. • Design standards are rudimentary and systems are often fragmented since there is little control over who's connecting and how the connection is being done. • They are owned by the community and managed by a water committee (if at all implemented) which rarely has the expertise, skills and financial resources to do so. • Running costs are mostly insignificant hence rarely seem to justify complex WDM measures/ projects. • Rural water supply means that there are many water supply systems often difficult to reach. All these points seem to impede WDM measures and ideas which are more consequently applied to urban water supply schemes. However, there are important considerations that WDM should play a bigger role in rural water supply. [MR351 - Schölzel]
[10] In general, economies of scale apply to water supply schemes. That basically means that costs to provide one unit of water to consumers decrease 2 with the amount of units produced. Hence, it is relatively more expensive to provide water to a person that lives in a small community than to a city dweller. However, very basic (and often insufficient) design standards (low design flow, very basic development of water intakes, small pipe sizes, few control devices, low building standards) provide means to reduce costs for rural water supply systems. On the other hand this leads in some cases to problems with the water supply from the very beginning; after all losing e.g 0.5 l/s in the form of leakage out of a system that was designed 3 to provide 1 l/s average flow means that 50% would be lost. That would certainly create problems for most village schemes. Even more important seems to be the fact that in many cases villagers substantially contribute to their water supply schemes either financially (two-third-one-third principle) or in the form of (unskilled) labour or both. These investments into safe water deserve the same protection as that given to urban schemes, if not more. Additionally the perceived lack of water in village supply schemes leads regularly to applications to extend the systems either with Government or other donor support. Very little attention is usually given to simply look into the system and analyse its performance and the reason for any possible underperformance although many such problems could be avoided through WDM. Finally, WDM in rural areas finds its justification with the apparent increase of droughts not as an emergency tool but as a relatively simple preventative means to provide safe water to the community. 1.2 WDM and Rural Water Supply Section in Vanuatu The need to further improve the Rural Water Supply Section in Vanuatu has been recognised widely. There are several studies 4 and projects that detail the problems, re-organisation and training needs as well as recommend solutions and strategies to overcome them. However, implementation lags far behind. 2 This principal applies not 'forever' since it usually becomes increasingly expensive to abstract water but this point may be ignored in the present case. 3 And probably does not yield much more at all because the easiest to access source has been captured for cost and convenience considerations 4 Eg Montgomery & Watson, 1997 and Mills, 1999 (not yet published). The reader is referred to these reports. [MR351 - Schölzel]
Page 1 and 2: SOPAC Water Resources Unit Water De
Page 3 and 4: [4] Summary This report summarises
Page 5 and 6: [6] Introduction In the past, devel
Page 7: [8] Acknowledgment The SOPAC Secret
Page 11 and 12: [12] Table 1: Identified WDM topics
Page 13 and 14: [14] The design population for Mele
Page 15 and 16: Flow [l/s] 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 [16] Flo
Page 17 and 18: Figure 6: Imposed demand according
Page 19 and 20: [20] References Montgomery & Watson
Page 21 and 22: [22] Appendix 2: Mele-Maat System I
Page 23 and 24: [24] [MR351 - Schölzel]
Page 25 and 26: [26] [MR351 - Schölzel]
Page 27 and 28: A. General Operational Data Managem
Page 29 and 30: Data loggers [30] Data loggers are
Page 31 and 32: • estimated leakage and priority
Page 33 and 34: [34] Equipment Comments / Applicati
Page 35: Leak detection equipment costs [36]

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