Your experiences with decentralized water management.

Published on by

Please introduce yourself to the group and experiences that you have had in implementing or planning decentralized water treatment/management projects.

7 Answers

  1. Hello, my name is Jan Bonn from BONNEL TECHNOLOGIE. We are developing and manufacturing Control Units for decentralized sewage treatment plants and pump stations.

    According to our experience, decentralized solutions could be a big benefit for the environment. Anyhow, in a lot of cases I’ve seen in many countries there was a lack of servicing. A decentralized treatment plant will not work without proper servicing and without proper installation. I’ve seen many plants that have been installed for a lot of money which simply don’t do more than a cheap septic tank. What I think we really need are: 

    - servicing and control regulated and monitored by the government

    - control units which monitor the plant in between, and in best case control units that forward the alarms via GSM or similar, so that the problems get solved

    What I’ve also seen are many 24/7 aerated plants with manual air distribution valves. Not one was working properly. I don’t think all plants need a control unit, a simple timer for 5USD and a fail-proof plant design would do as well. Or proper maintenance. Then these plans can work...

    I’m looking forward to interesting discussions in the group.

    Yours, Jan

  2. I think DEWATS can be a innovative solution for many small town along perennial river basins. These rivers are the only source of drinking water and these are getting polluted increasingly due to lack of sewage collection and treatment system.

  3. I am Barry Porter, CEO of Nubian Water Systems. Nubian was formed to research, develop and bring to the market products that address one of the most significant global challenges in the 21st Century – the maintenance of adequate supplies of clean drinking water.

  4. Good afternoon, my name is Emilio and I work for a water management company from Vienna, Austria. We are specialized in wastewater treatment based on SBR technology. We have developed a lot of decentralized WWTP around the world, in Croatia, Maldives island, Austria, Oman, and many countries more. From my experience i can say that the decentralized WWTP presents many advantages in comparison with centralized WWTP, in small communities, rural areas, turistic areas, etc. In terms of investment costs a decentralized WWTP is much more cheaper if compared with the pipeworking necessary to transport the wastewater toward the centralized collectar and afterwards to the central WWTP. As always, it is necessary to estimate correctly the total costs before taking a conclusive decision.

  5. The conventional centralised wastewater treatment faces lots of challenges in india, i think a hybrid sewer system combination of dewats and conventional collection system will prove more effective and envifonmental friendly. Please share your views........lets discuss + and -........

  6. As part of my Master's thesis I conducted fieldwork in Nepal to investigate their water governance, to more fully explore alternatives to centralized systems and large-scale projects, and to examine whether locally managed water systems are a more effective and responsible approach to providing water for all within the Kathmandu Valley. My conclusion was that centralized water management is all but a failure in Nepal, and restoring the country’s decentralized water management by elected local bodies, with room for private as well as community participation at various capacities, may be the best hope for Nepal’s water supply.

    1 Comment

  7. Hi colleagues, I've been fortunate to take part in the planning, design and construction of a number of water reuse & recycling schemes in Australia. Four of those are in operation with two at the commissioning stage and one about to start construction. Waste water reuse, sewer mining, grey water reuse and storm water harvesting projects. Hope the trend continues...