International Training Programme on Decentralised Wastewater Treatment including local reuse (March 14-16, 2016)

This training was organized by Centre for Science and Environment in collaboration with Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD). The MLGRD acted as local host to organise the training programme. This training was a part of efforts made by the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) and the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area Sanitation and Water Project (GAMA SWP) Capacity Building Team to develop the capacity of the 2012/2013 batch of Public Health Engineers. 

The training was organized with an aim to:  

• Provide knowledge, skill development and attitude change of participants towards sustainable decentralised wastewater management.  

• Build capacity of participants in the area of planning, designing and implementation of low cost decentralised wastewater treatment systems at different scales.  

• Provide a platform to share experiences on existing and upcoming policies and practices from India and South Asia on wastewater management.  

• Build south-south network of practitioners for mainstreaming sustainable wastewater management practices.  

Summary of the training:

The three days training programme had two days of classroom and one day field exposure visit (optional). A brief summary of series of events is given below: 

Day 1 (March 14, 2016) 

The day 1 started with introduction session facilitated by Ing. Hentietta Osei Tutu, MLGRD. The participants were asked to self introduce to neighboring participants in mini-groups and then introduced their partners to all others. They were also asked to write their expectations from the training programme on the given cards individually. The same cards were displayed in the training hall, which helped instructors as well as participants for better understanding of the focus subject areas. Dr. Suresh Rohilla, Programme Director, Water Programme, CSE informed participants about CSE’s different activities, its roles and responsibilities towards sustainable development and water-wastewater management. It was followed with session on urban wastewater management challenges, issues and the need for capacity building of practitioners and governmental functionaries. This session was followed by Ing.Tutu talking about GAMA-SWP project and MLGRD-CSE partnership and Ing. Bertha Darteh, Capacity Building Coordinator, GAMA-SWP elaborated the urban wastewater challenges with respect to Accra, Ghana. The concept of Decentralised wastewater treatment/ management was introduced through a documentary film ‘Clean your Act’ which elaborated the urban challenges with changing lifestyles and giving the message that there is an urgent need to bring behavioral change and start water efficient usage and local wastewater treatment including reuse. Facilitated by Ms. Chhavi Sharda, Senior Research Associate, Water Programme, CSE discussion of advantages and disadvantages of centralised and decentralised wastewater management encouraged active participation of each present. Following the session, Mr. Shantanu Kumar, Research Associate, Water Programme facilitated a session on Shit flow diagram (SFD) as a tool for urban sanitation. During the session Mr. Kumar introduced the concept and principles of the tool. The session concluded when participants worked individually and drew SFD for a city on the basis of given data. Mr. Kumar in the following session discussed wastewater characteristics and data collection for planning a decentralised wastewater management system. This was followed by Ms. Sharda discussing the principle and extensively detailed design of the Decentralised Wastewater Treatment systems. The day concluded by discussions on step by step designing procedure.

Day 2 (March 15, 2016) 

The Day 2 started with a reflection session which recapped the previous day with the help of an interactive quiz facilitated by Ms. Sharda. This followed by providing participants some time to absorb the information and an open slot to encourage questions and clarification of doubts. This was followed by a session on construction, costing and economics of DWWTs and session on Operation and Maintenance of DWWTs. Further, the day majorly had Do-It-Yourself practical exercises on designing of DWWTs including local reuse. The focal theme for the day was to apply the knowledge gained to plan and design the DWWT system by using the given dataset and lay out plan. Trainees worked in groups to estimate the wastewater for their data and design DWWT system for it. They were given layout plan to decide location of the system by considering all the procedure explained to them in construction session. The presentations were given by trainees for their work (proposed solution of the given problem). The day ended with presentation on case studies at various scales. Discussions on Centralised Vs Decentralised Wastewater Management systems facilitated by Ms. Chhavi Sharda, Water Programme, CSE Session on Wastewater Characteristics and data collection for planning DWWT facilitated by Mr. Shantanu Kumar, Water Programme, CSE Group Exercise on Wastewater Characteristics and Data Collection Group discussions during the exercises 8 The training programme ended with distributionof certificates by Ing. Bertha Darteh, Capacity Building Coordinator, GAMA-SWP.

Day 3 (March 16, 2016 - Field Visit) 

The participants had the opportunity to visit two sites: 

1. Decentralised wastewater treatment system (electromechanical) at Vidae Café Building 

2. Waste stabilization Pond at Lego University, Accra

List of participants: 

For more details regarding the training, click here>>

For further details contact:

Dr Suresh Kumar Rohilla, Programme Director, CSE
Email: srohilla@cseindia.org

Ms. Chhavi Sharda, Senior Research Associate, CSE
Email: chhavi@cseindia.org