Need of recycling wastewater
KHILENDRA BASNYAT
Some efforts are afoot to ensure smooth supply of drinking water to the maximum number of people around the world. Consequently, the population supplied by piped water has also been going up. Demand will soon outstrip supply if effective measures are not taken to improve this situation. Since population and demand for water increase, recycling wastewater can become helpful for mitigating drinking water crisis.
Research on practicability of wastewater reuse has hastened in the past few decades. It was found that, in Israel, about 65 percent of wastewater is reused in rural areas and 23 percent in urban ones.
Countries short of water may ultimately require sewers as a means of collecting all available wastewater for reclamation and reuse. They can be positive conservation measures, and acute shortage of water can be mitigated by this method.
Sewage, whether purely domestic in origin, industrial or agricultural, is the wastewater generated by a community resulting from washing, laundry and clearing purposes. Surface water sewers carry run-off from roofs, yards and roads. Sewers carrying only surface water can be discharged without treatment.
Research has made it clear that if sewage is discharged into a lake, stream or river, valuable nutrients are wasted. Not only this, the receiving water becomes polluted. As a lot of people still rely on surface water for irrigation and household water supply in hot climates; to retain quality of surface water, a realistic policy must be formulated on local pattern of surface water use.
In recent times, there has been an influx of people in many countries, especially in rural areas due to the availability of various facilities relating to health, education, trade and commerce. This is why there has been a steady increase in water demand.
Since water is the crying need of every individual. It should be available to all. However, many people have not been able to get sufficient water and have got tired of complaining against the concerned authorities because they turn a deaf ear to their grievances.
Although recycled wastewater is safe to drink, wastewater treatment and disposal systems are given low priority because of their high cost. Actually, water supplies are continued without any provision for disposal of resulting wastewater. Apart from this, unavailability of an effective methodology to assess the relative value of refuse and professional biases of engineers, public health officials and others has resulted in scant progress, however done effectively, wastewater reuse can reduce growing water problem to some extent.
Wastewater reuse is a useful method for meeting water demand. But such a method will only be successful if accepted by the concerned community. For this reason, community members should be involved in all stages of programming, planning and implementation.