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sewerage design, and for assisting in the planning, design and implementation of low-cost sewerage. This valuable technology needs to be accepted as one of the tools available to solve the pressing problems of urban and peri-urban sanitation in developing countries. The most appropriate and immediate mechanism for such an organization appears to be to expand the existing GARNET system, to include a new unit concerned solely with low-cost sewerage. This new unit, however, needs to stress the 'applied' rather than the 'research' element of low-cost sewerage: enough is already known to apply the technology, even though future research and field studies will undoubtedly lead to refinements*. |
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The International Working Group should ideally include: |
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members of the academic community actively engaged in research into low-cost sewerage, |
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consulting engineers with field experience of the design and implementation of such systems in developing countries, and |
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municipal engineers from developing country cities where such systems are in operation |
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Other people could be co-opted as necessary, to provide specific inputs. The group needs to be fairly smallperhaps no more than a dozen people. It needs to be financed, possibly by a bilateral aid agency, so that it has a budget for fees, secretarial support, publications, travel expenses, etc. |
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The prime responsibility of the International Working Group would be the promotion of low-cost sewerage. It would do this by preparing and distibuting a range of publications, and by arranging or conducting training courses in the various regions of the developing world. The publications should include design manuals (covering not only the hydraulic design of the sewers themselves, but also related topics such as the design of manholes, inspection chambers, and other appurtenances) and detailed case studies (including not only technical aspects but |
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*This new unit has now been established within GARNET as the Low-cost Sewerage Network; its co-ordinator is Professor Duncan Mara of the University of Leeds, who can be contacted at the e-mail address: d.d.mara@leeds.ac.uk. |
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