Water works: how a simple technology in Dhaka is changing the way people get clean water
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Amy Pickering laughs when she thinks of all the things that went wrong with the impact evaluation she recently completed of a water chlorination project in the slums of Bangladesh’s capital city Dhaka: delays, monsoons, and more delays.
“It was the hardest project I’ve ever done,” says the seasoned research engineer, now a professor at Tufts University, who was working on a project funded through the World Bank’s Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund.
Clean water is an issue in Dhaka and other overcrowded cities in the region, where contamination by bacteria can lead to high rates of diarrhea, harming children’s growth and health. For Pickering, who specializes in water quality and diarrheal disease, the challenge was finding a water treatment technology that could work without electricity and operate in Dhaka’s extreme weather.

Together with Stanford University’s Stephen Luby, Pickering assessed a novel treatment product that automatically dispenses small amounts of chlorine to create safe drinking water. The dispensers were installed at strategic water points – usually communal handpumps -- that typically serve anywhere from 10 to 100 families.
The impact evaluation study provides critical evidence on how to use simple, low-cost technology to make water safe in dense, urban areas that lack reliable energy sources. Results of the evaluation are expected in Fall 2017.
In a recent conversation with SIEF, Pickering talked about the problem with pipes in Dhaka, the business of clean water, and what’s on her mind every time she goes to the faucet.
Why focus on individual water points—in this case, handpumps or taps in communal areas—rather than create a centralized solution before the water is pumped to these water points?
and so water is sent to different parts of the system during different hours of the day. Because the system isn’t fully pressurized at all times, contamination and sewage seep into the system. The solution, therefore, couldn’t be centralized.
What are ‘point of collection’ treatments and how are they different from what’s already out there?
There’s been a push to get individual families who rely on shared water sources to treat their own water supply—called treating at the point-of-use—but it hasn’t been very successful. These programs focus on getting households to add their own chlorine manually, but that involves people buying their own chlorine, calculating the correct dosage, and remembering to add the chlorine daily. We wanted to try something that was automated and required minimal effort. This way, people filling containers with water don’t have to do anything to make it clean. Safe water out of the tap becomes the default.
What was the process like?
It turns out getting the system up and running was more difficult than I imagined. To start, I assumed that we’d be able to find an off-the-shelf technology that we’d be able to customize. But nothing existed that would work without electricity, in high temperatures, and in the extreme weather conditions of monsoon season in Bangladesh. We eventually got in contact with Medentech, an Irish company. They had already designed a chlorine doser for animals, and were in the process of adapting it for people and so we partnered with them for the evaluation. It’s a very simple technology that doesn’t require electricity. The chlorine refills are simple and safe to swap in and out.
Are residents willing or able to pay?
This evaluation got us thinking about that very question. The water points were in public locations in one of the study sites, but in the second study site they were all located on private compounds, and so we started working on another project to determine how much landlords would be willing to pay for clean water. We developed marketing materials and a sales pitch to landlords, showing that they could recover their costs by advertising safe water and charging higher rents. Landlords were able to bid to have the clean water service in their compound if: they bid high enough, they won the auction, and got the device installed with the chlorine refill service. We structured it to help us understand the business model that would work for scaling up. So far, it looks like landlords are willing to pay around $50 per year for the service. We don’t have an estimate yet for total cost of installing and operating the chlorine dispenser at scale, but the $50 should cover a bulk of the cost.
What was it like getting landlords interested?
We had to convince them that and that it’s used throughout the developing world. We did taste experiments to see what level of chlorine could be detected because we didn’t want the residents to be turned off by the taste of chlorine.
What’s next?
We plan to disseminate the results to the Bangladesh government and other organizations working on increasing access to safe water later this summer with the hopes that they are interested in implementing the chlorine dosers. We are also now expanding the project to roadside water stands in Kenya, and working on a business model that would work in other countries.
Finally, does this make you think more about the water you drink?
This research definitely increased my awareness of water quality and safety, even in my home town. Public water in developed countries is generally very safe, but there are still contaminants, like lead, and I do sometimes worry about that when my kids drink. I am so grateful that I can just go to the sink and get a glass of clean water!
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Very interesting strategy to increase clean water access. I work for Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and last year I partnered with a clean water social enterprise in Indonesia called Nazava. They try to address the issue through in-home water filters. From our research, they seemed to have quite a lot of impact especially in more rural places. It's always fascinating for me to see the different innovative ways that we can address this important issue in areas around the world! Keep up the good work! Also if you were interested in our impact evaluation for the Nazava strategy it can be found here ( http://www.globalsocialbenefit.institute/portfolio/nazava2017direct.html )
Nice innovation but what about its sustainability?
As a plumber I'm very aware of the engagement challenges surrounding well-being and water in-community. It can be a negative-option purchase or task. So, it was nice to see the grass-roots technological connection between science and people... not always an easy sell in Kenya, Canada and elsewhere?!
Dear DAPHNA BERMAN ,
1) I have gone through the blog and found it very interesting on the concern of clean and safe drinking water in Dhaka .
2) I have proposed a multipurpose solar energy based water treatment plant along with e-vehicle and mobile charging station to obtain sustainability of mini water treatment plant on each tube well to IDCOL and WORLD BANK but it got shadowed for unknown reason .
3) I offered this multipurpose solar power based water treatment plant to even many other World Bank supported project in rural area but all are under shadow yet.
4) I request you to please see if such proposal can serve the purpose and concern.
Await your feed back
Regards
Mahina Arefin
Hi, i saw your comment on regards of multipurpose solar power treatment plant. I wished to know more about it.
Please email me any link that can be seen on the said mechanism.
TQ
hmmm. Mahina, your above mentioned four points appear to be very notice-worthy.. tnx n regards,
Hasan.
Awesome, Thanks for contributing your important time to post such an interesting & useful collection of knowledgeable resources that are always of great need to everyone. I visit this blog first time and encourage by this good stuff work. Unbelievable post keeps up posting such great information. There are things here that I didn't think some time as of late. am very enjoyed for this weblog. It’s an informative subject matter.
Thank you all for your comments. We will continue to post blogs featuring some of the interesting evaluations SIEF is supporting around the globe.
I must commend your determination to come up with an option of providing reliable and cost effective approach of providing wholesome water to meet the basic needs of a typical rural setting.This is good but my worry is how it can be domesticated in the third countries like Nigeria.We really need to increase access of potable in most part of African Countries.I believe you can have markets over here.On the hand can we partner with you?Regards.
Very interesting strategy to increase clean water access.Thanks for contributing your important time.
Clean water is an issue in Dhaka and other overcrowded cities in the region, where contamination by bacteria can lead to high rates of diarrhea, harming children’s growth and health.
The great research was done for the sake of people. Everyone must get clean and safe water Because it affects the children by causing various diseases.
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I want to said that the idea of the girl is fascinating since is a scant future, tragically we will need that artifact that purifies the water because we don't know how to value the things we have until we lose them, in this case the water; as the humanity doesn't stop manufacturing and manufacturing unnecessary thing that contaminate the soil and it the water; and the worst is that nobody does anything to try to recover the contaminated water, if not that we don't care and still contaminated, until this girl do the invention that can change many lives.
Awesome! I really like how this strategy could help all the places in extreme poverty, places with polluted water or some sites of the world where its hard to get water on their houses, so i think this will be a start of a very good project which has a good future.
I think that water pollution is a problem that can be solved if we change old habbits in our lifes, and if we start saving water.