Impact of water safety plan on municipal water supply system in selected pourashavas

Abstract

An effort was made in this research to assess the impact of WSP in municipal piped water supply systems based on identified key indicators. A quality assurance tool was developed to carry out auditing of WSPs that indicates the maturity of any WSP, implemented in urban-piped water supplies. Finally, the QA audit tool was used in selected two municipal towns to carry out a gap analysis of the implemented WSPs in comparison to ideal scenario. The results of indicator based WSP impact assessment and WSP audit were validated against findings from water quality test results and household survey findings. The key research questions that were answered through the research include whether WSP have affirmative impact on realizing health-based outcomes and if WSP implemented in different type of urban-piped water supply systems can be audited on a common ground so that maturity of different WSPs can be compared. The indicator based assessment showed positive outcome and impact of WSP in both Chandpur and Chapai-Nawabganj Pourashava. In Chandpur, level of operations and management practices increased to 24 from 8 out of 40 points. The cost recovery has improved as revenue collected per consumer has increased to 128 BDT/consumer from 68 BDT/consumer in last one year. Stakeholders’ knowledge and understanding have also increased from 12 to 19 out of 25. Percentage of treated water samples compliant with microbial water quality targets increased to 90 with WSP compared to 80 without WSP. Diarrheal incidence rate also decreased to 24 percent from 34 percent at that stages. Operations and management practices in Chapi-Nawabganj increased to 17 from 8 out of 40 points. However, operating cost of produced water increased by 0.34 BDT/cubic-meter mainly due to increase in electricity tariff over time. Understanding of water supply system by the stakeholders has been increased from five to 25 on a scale of 25. Eighty percent water samples are compliant with microbial water quality targets with WSP, which was 50 percent without WSP. Diarrheal incidence rate has also gone down from 37 percent to 29 percent. WSP audit performed using the QA tool scored 93 and 98 out of 120 in Chandpur and Chapai-Nawabganj respectively. This indicated that the WSP maturity in both the water supply systems stands as ‘Good’. The QA tool has high prospect to be used in the country and region as WSP audits become increasingly important due to its integration with regulatory environment. The tool can be further tailored to suit all scheme types and levels of sophistication.