Acceptance of reed bed sewer treatment system with owner-driven method for bulk resettlement projects – a case study

Abstract

Tsunami, which made a massive damage and which made a massive resettlement in the country let the government, NGOs (None Governmental Organizations) as well as the community to rethink of their traditional construction methods as well as the sustainability. More than the construction, the high concentration of dwellings led high level of environmental pollution due to massive discharge of waste. Above all sewer was the key, since many of the house owners were not used to proper hygienic practices. Human practice was to release there sewers directly or indirectly to the environment without an appropriate treatment. Physically it can be evident that some of the reservoirs and cannels were polluted drastically due to release of sewers directly to it and with the amount added to natural environments difficult to bear with its treatment capacity. So, more than introducing sustainable cost effective means, it was more important to train them as well as motivate them for best hygienic practices. Hence, Reed bed sewer treatment mechanism was design with respect to SLS 745:2003 and constructed under the tsunami recovery program, American Red Cross in 2009.Through that it showed the optimistic level on treatment of sewer and people involvement in construction of their sanitation system (Owner-driven) and home gardening with the treated sewer waste water. The research was carried out to investigate the acceptance of the new system as well as to investigate the pluses and minuses with the new system. The housing schemes were reviewed with respect to sewer systems and a detail survey was carried out to investigate how the household have accepted the system. Even though the systems were design and constructed using the standards, since there wasn’t much follow up by the respective officials the process was abundant at few places. However, it was noted that people are keener to go for new systems, which has some visible extra benefits such as gardening. Further, this surely will be a good option for the ongoing massive resettlements in north and northeast for war victims, since the water is an issue as well as most of of the areas are running less water for gardening and the water table is considerably law.