Effective septic management for condominiums and apartments in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka is a developing country, where wastewater and septic disposal are not managed at its optimum level. 76% percent of the households equip with their own water sealed latrines for sanitation facilities and discharged septic mixture is collected to a septic tank. Periodical septic removal from the household storages are required at a cost. Limited space availability in urban dwellings, apartments and condominiums caused practical issues to the current practice of the septate removal. Management of variated amounts of septate is a challenging function because the capacities of the offsite treatment plants are inadequate in highly populated urban areas, effectiveness of the treatment facilities is not consistent due to lack of technical knowledge and improper maintenance. Poor handling of human waste is caused by contamination of faecal sludge in water reservoirs, disposal of human excreta and urine without converting them into usable or commercialized end products and huge burden to municipalities to handle septic in terms of economical and practical. Currently effective human waste management becomes a national level discussion. It is planned to conduct national level survey and review the techniques and technological status locally, regionally and globally and make recommendations for practical technology transfer. Other than that enhance the quality of the composting can be obtained from the human excreta to a fertilizer through nutrient addition and facilitate the adoption of new composting technologies to enhance the yield and quality and implement household and institutional level conversion of septic into compost are key concerns. As per the world health organization prevention of spreading of water borne diseases such as typhoid or cholera is difficult due to the faecal contamination of drinking water sources. More than two million of child deaths annually occur due to the pneumonia and diarrhoea globally. Most of the children living in poor or remote communities are facing this risk and to the facts that preventable diseases are not mitigated by effective interventions which are not provided equally to all communities. Managing human septic from domestic and commercial sources and urban run-off is largely a matter of proper treatment and disposal. In Sri Lanka 97% of the community is relying on water sealed latrines and septic tanks for sanitation while about 3% use sewerage connection. Large part of the country does not have treatment plants to disposal of faecal sludge safely. Further treatment processes to sanitized night soil is required before disposal or delivering as a fertilizer. Local authorities are simply collecting the content in the septic tanks and dump it into the available treatment plants where poor end product management. Current situation with septic disposal is grown adversely with the increasing the number of multi-storey buildings in the urban areas due to 90% of urban dwellers equip with onsite sanitation systems with water sealed latrines directed to the septic collection tanks or cesspits. This thesis conducted to find out ancient and latest techniques and technologies of septic management applicable to current practice in the Sri Lankan context. Data were collected from three distinct multi-storey buildings located within the Colombo municipal council and analysed the discharged volumes of the septic and way of disposal. Possibility of adaptation or implementation of ancient and latest technologies are discussed extensively based on the results on the results of the analysis. Properly treated faecal sludge with organic fractions of municipal solid waste has higher possibility to be used as an agricultural resource for farmers in the country. Currently use of faecal sludge as fertilizers and possibility of replacing the mineral fertilizers are not popular in Sri Lanka. Sustainable and appealing solutions are required to dispose human waste with the increasing population country. Research works and experiments in the relevant areas are required to extend and develop further to ensure the sustainable management of faecal sludge.