Residential Training on Greywater Management in Rural Areas

This year the Rural Water and Waste Team of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has partnered with the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation(under the Ministry of Jal Shakti) to capacitate the officials working on Swachh Bharat Mission (grameen) in specific areas of management of faecal sludge,greywater and plastics in the rural areas. On January 17, the team has rolled out a 4-day residential training on ‘Greywater Treatment and Reuse at Household, Community and Village Level’.The training was attended by 21 officials from the states of Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Manipur. The training objective was to train the officials the need, ways and importance of greywater treatment in rural areas.

The objective of the training was to provide in depth knowledge and insight on the concepts, of management of greywater at household, community and village level. The design of the training program included the topics of greywater treatment, introduction to decision matrix, developing plan for greywater management, conveyance mechanism for greyawter treatment, technological overview of onsite greywater treatment system. A field visit was planned to understand greywater management at village level and community interaction.

On day 1, the topics covered were: difference between greywater and blackwater, understand the pollutants levels and impacts of untreated greywater, community sensitization on consequence of using untreated greywater, sourcing the data required for planning greywater management and developing overall plan for greywater management at village level.

Second day of the training was organized for field visit to phytroid based treatment system inTaj Nagar village which is situated in Gurugoan district, Haryana. The field exposure was planned in a way so that the training participants get an exposure to overall management of greywater management, their construction and operation and impacts. This was followed by interaction of the participants with the stakeholders involved in the implementation of the treatment systems. The sourcing of funds for implementation and operations of the systems were clearly explained by the implementing agency. The participants were very excited to understand the technical modalities of design and implementation of treatment system. The same day participants were taught on community and household level and technological details and design description of onsite greywater management options.

The training on third day also included the topics of background, feasibility, site identifications, and financial details of community and village level treatment system, potential reuse options for treated greywater. On thesame day, the participants had a group discussion and laboratory visit on water quality monitoring and advanced laboratory instruments to monitor water quality.

On the fourth day the participants got to know funding sources, institutional setup of greywater management system along with the groups exercises session wherein the participants worked on the village level plan for managing the greywater.

Finally the training concluded with distribution of certificates to all the participants and getting their feedback.

The participants were very positive about the training and overall arrangements in the green campus of AAETI and provided good feedback. They expect more such trainings to be organized so that regular orientation and support can help in maintaining the pace of SBMG’s objectives.

The speakers of the training were from Ministry of Jal Shakti, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA).