by Silas Allen, originally posted on April 1, 2015

LAWTON — After several years of drought have devastated drinking water supplies, several Oklahoma communities are working on a plan to access what little water is left in Waurika Lake.

Lake managers and officials six towns that draw water from Waurika Lake hope to dredge silt from the bottom of the lake. The project would give residents access to more than 8 billion gallons of water they didn’t have before.

“That’s a lot of water to us,” said Dave Taylor, director of the Waurika Lake Master Conservancy District.

The plan’s details haven’t been determined, Taylor said, but the estimated $12 million price tag would be covered by the six cities that use the lake as a drinking water source — Lawton, Duncan, Comanche, Temple, Walters and Waurika.

Areas of southern and southwestern Oklahoma have been in drought since October 2010, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. A drought monitor report released last week lists nearly all of southwest Oklahoma in extreme or exceptional drought, the report’s two most severe categories.

Those years of drought have taken a toll on municipal drinking water supplies across the region. The water level at Waurika Lake was down 19 feet Wednesday, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, leaving the lake at just 29 percent of its capacity.

“Obviously, the lake is low,” Taylor said. “It’s at the lowest point it’s been since it was built.”

At the moment, lake managers can only draw water using the reservoir’s middle water intake gate. Another gate farther below the water line is broken and blocked by silt, Taylor said. Lake managers hope to repair the lower gate and clear silt away from it, then dredge silt out of the lake’s original channel.

Lake managers are waiting for permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin work. Once those permits are issued, managers hope to begin the bidding process for the project within weeks, Taylor said.

Once that work is complete, cities would immediately have access to an additional 25,000 acre-feet of water, Taylor said. An acre-foot is the the amount of water required to cover an acre of land a foot deep.

Besides giving immediate access to more water, dredging the reservoir would create a more sustainable water situation where the amount of water running into the lake more nearly equals the amount that’s pumped out or lost to evaporation, Taylor said.

Cities across southern and southwestern Oklahoma have taken drastic measures to stave off the effects of drought. Lawton has been under stage 3 watering restrictions since last year. Those restrictions limit outdoor watering to certain hours, two days a week. City officials there are also considering other measures, including a cloud-seeding plan.

In Duncan, officials enacted a near-total ban on outdoor watering last year. Duncan City Manager Jim Frieda last month called the city’s water situation “pretty frightening.”

The Duncan City Council approved a utility rate increase last month to pay for the dredging project. Frieda said Duncan’s share of the cost of the project would be an estimated $246,000 a year for 30 years.

Frieda said the dredging project would expand the city’s access to water from its main source. City officials also hope to improve the infrastructure at several smaller city-owned reservoirs, Frieda said.

by Aryn Baker, originally posted on April 4, 2013

Now that spring has arrived in the Middle East, Syria’s estimated 1.2 million refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan can hope for relief from the snow, the rain and the bitterly cold nights of winter. But that relief will be as short-lived as the region’s balmy weather. Summer is fast on its way, and in Jordan in particular, life for Syrian refugees, and the border communities that support them, is about to get a lot worse.

Jordan is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, subject to an ongoing drought that has devastated agricultural prospects in the country’s northern areas for nearly a decade. The large and rapid influx of Syrian refugees into the border cities of Ramtha and Mafraq, home to the Za’atari refugee camp, has strained water supplies to the breaking point — for two weeks in February, parts of Mafraq town had no water whatsoever. Summer’s soaring temperatures will put additional demands on a poor region that can hardly support its own population, let alone the surge of new refugees that are expected as the war in Syria grinds on. When the peaceful Syrian uprising evolved into a bloody conflict nearly two years ago, residents of Mafraq welcomed refugees fleeing the violence. That hospitality is starting to wane. Competition between Syrian refugees and local residents over limited resources, from water to electricity, food, schooling, housing and health care could boil over, potentially causing unrest in one of the few stable countries left in the Middle East. “As temperatures rise, so too will tensions,” says Nigel Pont, Middle East Regional Director for Mercy Corps, an international development agency actively involved with the Syrian crisis. Resentment among the Jordanians is palpable, he adds, and could easily escalate into violence if the underlying issues are not addressed.

Some 3,000 Syrians are crossing the Jordanian border every day, and aid agencies working with the 363,000 refugees already in the country anticipate that at this rate they will see another million in Jordan alone by the end of the year. Border towns like Mafraq have seen populations double since the start of the Syrian conflict, driving prices for rent, food and utilities sky-high. At the same time, the Jordanian government is considering reducing its historically generous subsidies on fuel. So costs are rising along with demand—a perfect storm for the Jordanian economy that has many grumbling about unwelcome guests.

International assistance can help with food, housing and even fuel to supply Jordan’s burgeoning refugee population to a certain extent. Water, however, is the one thing that can’t be airlifted in. For decades Jordan has relied on extracting groundwater to supply its own growing population, but those supplies are dwindling. According to antipoverty charity Oxfam, which is also involved with the Syrian conflict, groundwater extraction is nearly three times the recharge rate in some areas, which means that wells are quite literally going dry. To make things worse, Oxfam estimates that 50% of water in Mafraq district is lost through leaks in aging pipes or by people illegally siphoning water from the municipal system.

“The Syrian refugee emergency is highlighting one of Jordan’s most pressing problems — water,” says Christian Snoad, Oxfam’s water, sanitation and hygiene coordinator in Za’atari, in a recently released statement. “Solutions need to be found to deal with Jordan’s water scarcity, and this will need to be done as a matter of urgency.” As it is, towns that used to have running water one day a week are now only getting it once every two weeks. And with more than half of the Syrian refugees living in towns like Mafraq, it’s all too easy for Jordanians to blame the newcomers for the shortages. To fill in the gaps residents must rely on water delivered by private tanker companies, a costly alternative that is fueling further resentment.

Aid agencies such as Oxfam and Mercy Corps have dug wells in the Za’atari refugee camp to assuage shortages there, but it’s a short-term solution, especially as numbers grow. To help residents and refugees outside the camp, the U.S. Agency for International Development has partnered with Mercy Corps on a $20 million project to refurbish Jordan’s ailing water system where the influx of Syrian refugees has disrupted supplies.

These initiatives will only help if the incoming numbers stay stable, all the more unlikely considering the worsening violence across Syria. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 6,000 Syrians were killed in March, making it the deadliest month since the start of hostilities in 2011. On Tuesday, rebel forces attacked a Damascus suburb in an attempt to reach the heart of President Bashar Assad’s stronghold. The regime retaliated with a barrage of rockets, mortars and air strikes on northern suburbs allied with the opposition. It is impossible to predict where the war will go next: the rebels are determined; so too is the regime. But if Damascus does fall, or any of Syria’s southern cities for that matter, a surge of Syrians heading for the Jordanian border is a given. Instead of 3,000 refugees a day, Jordan might find itself forced to accept hundreds of thousands — a catastrophic burden for any country, not least one already on edge because of its own dwindling resources.

UPDATE: Jordan’s Prime Minister-designate, Abdullah Ensour, warned in parliamentary debate that an increased influx of Syrian refugees would be “catastrophic” for the country. In  a subsequent conversation with journalists, he suggested that the government was considering alternatives, including the establishment of buffer zones in southern Syria that would serve the dual purpose of protecting Jordan from spillover from the ongoing conflict, as well as house would-be refugees seeking safety across the border. On 5 April the United Nations warned that it would soon have to start cutting aid to Syrian refugees across the region, due to inadequate funding. “The needs are rising exponentially, and we are broke,” Marixie Mercado, a spokeswoman for Unicef, told reporters in Geneva according to the New York Times. “Across the region, a lot of our operations are going to have to start scaling down unless we get money.” Unicef warned that it had received only a quarter of requested funds, and as a result would be forced to stop deliveries of 3.5 million liters of water to 100,000 Syrian refugees by June – just when demand will peak.

by Brett Berntsen, originally posted on July 15, 2016

FARMINGTON — The AV Water company has not met its initial deadline for completing the construction of a pump station to provide Crouch Mesa residents with potable water from the city of Farmington and end a lengthy boil advisory.

About 7,000 customers served by the company’s Morningstar and Harvest gold water systems have been living under the boil advisory since May 25, due to treatment plant failures. The situation has sparked public outcry and prompted an emergency order from the New Mexico Environment Department, which gave the company a deadline of July 15 to remedy the situation.

According to a written update issued today from AV Water, work is now scheduled for completion on July 21. AV Water General Manager Fred Whistle declined to comment for this story and referred all questions to the report.

NMED spokeswoman Allison Scott Major said in a email today that the department was informed that AV Water was seeking a deadline extension, but the agency had not received a formal request. She said once the request is received, the NMED’s Drinking Water Bureau will determine if the company is in compliance with the emergency order.

Majure said there are potential fines of up to $1,000 per day if the emergency order directives are not met.

In response to the problems at the treatment plant, the company has entered into a contract with the city of Farmington to buy bulk water and distribute it. That plan, however, requires the company to build a new pump station to route water throughout its customer base.

AV Water’s failures have drawn scrutiny at the local and state levels. Both the NMED and the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission have launched investigations into the situation. The PRC, which regulates the rates and business practices of utilities, has ordered the company to show why it should not be found in violation of the public utility act and face financial penalties.

“That response has been received by the agency and is presently being evaluated,” PRC spokesman Carlos Padilla said in an email.

Frustrated Crouch Mesa residents have also formed the Animas Valley Water Protesters group on Facebook, urging residents to document their grievances in an effort to explore the possibility of legal action against the company. Group members have posted pictures of water bills received for June. Some residents wrote that they received a discount for receiving undrinkable water, but others stated that they did not.

Ray Padilla, the owner of Dino’s gas station in Crouch Mesa, said his business has suffered from not being able to serve coffee and soft drinks during the boil advisory. Padilla said AV Water officials offered to reimburse him for losses in beverage sales.

“That’s really not the point, though,” he said. “Customers are going elsewhere. It’ll be hard to get them back.”

In addition to his concerns about his business, Padilla said he feels sorry for the elderly and disabled Crouch Mesa residents without access to drinking water during the hottest months of the year.

“I really worry about them,” he said.

To provide some relief, the San Juan County Office of Emergency Management is continuing to operate 24-hour water fill centers at McGee Park and in front of the Aztec Police station. For more information on the boil advisory, visit the NMED website at env.nm.gov/dwb/avwer.htm.

originally posted on July 14, 2016

Dozens of boil water advisories have been issued in Alberta First Nations communities, one after E. coli was detected at a daycare, others after mice were found in water tanks.

In all, Health Canada has issued 56 drinking water advisories affecting First Nations communities in Alberta since April 2015 — more than the 52 orders Alberta Health Services made for the rest of the province over the same time period.

Most of the Health Canada advisories have ended, but 11 remained in place as of May 31. Five have been in effect for at least five years.

It’s “a regular thing, nothing surprising anymore,” Sucker Creek First Nation Chief James Badger said of advisories in his community.

Water concerns prompted Sucker Creek and three other Alberta First Nations to launch a lawsuit in 2014 against the federal government, claiming Canada breached its duties to provide First Nations with safe drinking water.

That lawsuit will continue until their systems are upgraded, Badger said.

In its 2016 budget, the federal government committed $2.2 billion over five years to improve on-reserve water and waste water systems. So far, just 1.6 per cent of that, or $35.6 million, has been allocated to Alberta.

For just his community, Badger estimated upgrades would cost about $43 million.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada said in a statement that only two of Alberta’s current boil water advisories relate to public water systems, and plans are in place to upgrade their treatment plants.

While Alberta might be doing better than some regions in the country — Ontario had 70 advisories in place as of May 31 — water issues remain chronic for some First Nations.

In Sucker Creek, concerns extend beyond the one boil water advisory Health Canada listed since Feb. 9, 2015, that affects the water tank at Ray’s Gas Bar in the community.

The First Nation has a water treatment plant, but limited water and waste water lines in its town site. Some homes and buildings, both in town and outside, require water to be trucked from the plant and stored in tanks where contamination can occur, Badger said.

The reasons for boil water advisories vary. A couple of years ago, there was cross-contamination of the town’s water and waste water lines and the community still doesn’t have sufficient funds for repairs, Badger said.

The Dene Tha’ First Nation faces similar issues in northwestern Alberta.

Chief Joe Pastion said he remembers hunting as a child with his father and being able to drink water straight from the land.

Today, access to clean drinking water is an ongoing concern for his three communities of Bushe River, Chateh and Meander River.

“We continue to buy store-bought water in order to cook and drink,” Pastion said.

Since 2012, there have been at least five Health Canada advisories issued for the Dene Tha’ communities, four of which related to specific cisterns.

In June, a 20-day drinking water advisory was issued for the daycare in Bushe River — Health Canada said its cistern was “damaged or inadequately maintained.” One advisory remains in place, since April 29, for the Bushe River semi-public food and gas cistern.

While clean drinking water is available from water treatment plants in High Level and 100 km north in Chateh, preventing re-contamination during distribution is an ongoing issue.

“We can’t keep up with the ongoing cleaning and maintenance of the water cisterns,” Pastion said, noting the community has applied for funding to improve maintenance.

Nicholas Ashbolt, a professor of public health at the University of Alberta, said some Alberta First Nations could also benefit from funding and training to develop comprehensive drinking water safety plans.

These plans look at the whole system, starting with the community’s source water.

Things such as resource development, urban areas and leaky sewage ponds have the potential to pollute drinking water, Ashbolt said.

Understanding these risks can help treatment plant operators ensure they’re monitoring for the types of contaminants to which their system is most vulnerable.

These plans should assess the water distribution system; about a third of all outbreaks occur because of contamination of clean drinking water during distribution, he said.

BOSKRUIN – Residents say they are frustrated after going five days without any water.

-originally posted on July 12, 2016

by Oge chi Ekeanyanwu, originally posted on July 11, 2016

“I have two children, but one is dead. A month after I gave birth to him, he started having diarrhea, and then he had a fever. I took him to Gwagwa and he died there. He was sick for one month,” Habibatu Abubakar says.

Habibatu lives in Bassan Jiwa community in Abuja. And in that community, there is hardly water to drink. Women in the community are responsible for this chore, they and the children bear the brunt of a lack of access to water. Stories like this abound, MIND, an NGO that focuses on urban poor women, says.

“When I don’t have water stored, I go to fetch water five times a day. And when I have water stored, I go four times a day. At the borehole, I pay five naira for each bucket of water. Every day, I spend thirty naira and sometimes fifty naira. It is crowded. If I go there and there are lots of people,” Habibatu tells the organization.

The statistics are gruelling, and Nigeria is at the receiving end of all of this. For instance, in 2015, 80 per cent of all child death occurred in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and nearly half occurred in just five countries, including Nigeria.

The reasons are basic, inadequate access to drinking water, poor hygiene and sanitation amongst others.

“Sometimes, I would climb a motorbike and head to Basa to buy and carry back water. I would use it to bath the kids before heading to school. The stream, that stream, is very dangerous water. Sometimes if you use it for bathing, you will start peeing blood after some months. And if you bath there, you will develop a skin rash and be scratching yourself.

“That’s why I don’t allow my children to go there to fetch water, because that water is bad water, diseased water. My oldest child went there to wash clothes, and afterwards, when he had to urinate at night he would urinate blood. We took him to hospital for tests. They told us it was the water where he had washed clothes. They gave him medicine and it stopped, but then it came back,” Justina Okafor said in an interview the organization, MIND, conducted.

According to a research by the UNICEF, in low- and middle-income countries like Nigeria, inadequate drinking water, sanitation and hygiene accounted for around 1,000 under-five deaths per day.

In Nigeria, lack of access to improved water and sanitation facilities may elevate the risk of mortality among children aged 1 to 11 months.

But it is not just access to water that puts Nigeria as a disadvantaged position of high statistics in child mortality and the quality of life led by children. The staggering uneven distribution of wealth, for instance, is a factor.

And regions in the country affected by insurgency have double the size of under-five mortality rate.

The “under-five mortality rate (U5MR) in the wealthiest and the poorest households is above the SDG target, and marked disparities persist between regions (in Nigeria).

“In the North-West region of Nigeria, for example, U5MR was double that of the South-West. And while the richest 20 per cent will have to cut mortality by more than half to achieve the target by 2030, the poorest 20 per cent must achieve a reduction of three quarters.”

MALNUTRITION

Nigeria is the country with the second worst malnutrition statistics. The federal ministry of health warned that malnutrition in children contributes to the high children mortality in Nigeria.  According to the federal ministry of health, 1 in every 2 child deaths is from malnutrition and 37 per cent of children are stunted. This paints a stark picture for Nigeria – stunted growth means poor brain development and inability to reach full potential and in turn, the society’s full potential.

“Denying hundreds of millions of children a fair chance in life does more than threaten their futures – by fueling intergenerational cycles of disadvantage, it imperils the future of their societies,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.

“We have a choice: Invest in these children now or allow our world to become still more unequal and divided,” UNICEF says.

But if the statistics look bleak for Nigeria, it is worse in sub-Saharan Africa region with over 247 million children “or 2 in 3 – live in multidimensional poverty, deprived of what they need to survive and develop, and where nearly 60 per cent of 20- to 24-year-olds from the poorest fifth of the population have had less than four years of schooling,” UNICEF says.

It added that if allowed to go on, nearly half of the 69 million children who will die before their fifth birthday from mostly preventable causes will come from sub-Saharan Africa.

The region will also account for more than half of the 60 million children of primary school age who will still be out of school; and nine out of 10 children living in extreme poverty.

by originally posted on July 11, 2016

Nations are gathering in New York this week to discuss the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to improve health, wealth and well-being for countries both rich and poor.

As a developed nation, it might be assumed that Australia will easily meet these new goals at home – including goal number 6, to ensure “availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. But the unpalatable truth is that many Australians still lack access to clean water and effective sanitation.

The World Bank’s Development Indicators list Australia as having 100% access to clean water and effective sanitation. But a discussion paper we released last week with our colleagues outlines how some remote Aboriginal communities struggle to meet Australian water standards.

Making water safe

High standards of health and well-being are unattainable without safe, clean drinking water, removal of toilet waste from the local environment, and healthy hygiene behaviours.

The Western Australian government has reported that drinking water in some remote communities is contaminated with uranium, faecal bacteria and nitrates above the recommended levels.

This contamination – combined with problems such as irregular washing of faces, hands and bodies (often without soap), and overcrowding in homes – means that residents in these communities suffer from water- and hygiene-related health problems at a higher rate than the general Australian population.

The health situation in affected communities throws up some sobering facts. Australia is the only developed country that has not eradicated trachoma, a preventable tropical disease that can cause blindness. It persists in remote areas with poor hygiene, where children repeatedly pass on the infection.

Similarly, glue ear, which is influenced by poor water and hygiene practices and can cause permanent hearing loss and developmental difficulties, is prominent in these communities. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that one in eight Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people reported ear and/or hearing problems in 2012-13. This is significantly more than non-Indigenous people.

Installing properly managed community swimming pools can provide a community-wide (and enjoyable) amenity that will also contribute to preventing glue ear, trachoma and other hygiene-related infections.

How committed is Australia to delivering at home?

In signing up to the SDGs last September, the Australian government stated that this agenda:

…helps Australia in advocating for a strong focus on economic growth and development in the Indo-Pacific region … [and is] well aligned with Australia’s foreign, security and trade interests.

What is glaring about this statement is the lack of any mention of a national focus.

Australia should focus on delivering safe water at home as well as abroad – especially given Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s new role as a member of the United Nations’ High-Level Panel on Water.

Our discussion paper sets out how Australia can approach the task of delivering safe water, sanitation services and hygiene practices both at home and in the Asia-Pacific region.

One crucial recommendation is for government departments to avoid addressing the 17 SDGs (which have 169 different targets) as a simple “checklist”, because many of them overlap and intersect in complex ways.

For example, education quality (SDG 4) can affect gender equality (SDG 5), which in turn affects behaviour around water use and hygiene (SDG 6). Similarly, within SDG 6 itself are targets to protect water-based ecosystems, but this obviously influences the accompanying targets of water quality and universal human access to safe water.

The World Health Organisation has estimated that access to clean, safe water and sanitation could reduce the global disease burden by almost 10%. The UN SDGs provide aspirational goals to address this. In Australia, the disease burden is low but persistent. This means that the goal for proper water and sanitation cannot be said to have been satisfactorily met.

This week’s UN talks offer an ideal time to put Australia’s remote communities in the spotlight and draw much-needed attention to the preventable toll of water-related health issues they still experience.

by Tommy Koh, originally posted on July 9, 2016

The United Nations was founded in 1945. Last year, on the occasion of its 70th anniversary, the leaders of the world met at its headquarters in New York. On Sept 25, 2015, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a visionary agenda to transform the world. The agenda is called “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. It contains 17 sustainable development goals and 169 targets, which are to be achieved by the year 2030.

In goal No. 6, the aspiration is to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water by 2030. Can Asia achieve this goal?

In this essay, I will begin with an overview of Asia’s water challenges, discuss the most important things that Asia should do in order to achieve the goal and conclude with some thoughts on Singapore’s experiences.

ASIA’S WATER CHALLENGES
The first of Asia’s water challenges is caused by the growing gap between urbanisation and the provision of water and sanitation services to the urban population.

It is estimated that by 2050, 60 per cent of Asians will live in cities. At present, about 269 million Asians do not have access to safe drinking water. To reduce this number to zero by 2030 is a formidable task in view of the exponential increase in Asia’s urban population and the inadequate urban infrastructure in many Asian countries and cities.

Another serious problem in Asia is that about 80 per cent of waste water is being discharged into rivers and the sea with little or no treatment. In Vietnam, only 4 per cent of waste water is treated. In India, it is 9 per cent, in the Philippines, 10 per cent, and 14 per cent in Indonesia. The consequence is that the untreated waste water will contaminate the water ecosystem. The UN’s target is to reduce by half the percentage of untreated water by 2030.

The second challenge is that Asia is depleting its groundwater at an unsustainable rate. According to the Asian Development Bank, seven of the 15 biggest extractors of groundwater in the world are in Asia. India, China and Pakistan account for 86 per cent of the total groundwater extraction in Asia. If the current trend continues, groundwater will eventually become depleted. This will have disastrous consequences for food production as well as for human consumption.

The third challenge is Asia’s vulnerability to floods. In 2014 and 2015, Indonesia, Malaysia, Southern Thailand and Sri Lanka were afflicted by serious floods caused by the north-east monsoon. Millions of people were displaced. Another negative consequence of the floods was that they contaminated the potable water. The contaminated water, in turn, caused water-borne diseases. More than 340,600 children under five die annually from diarrhoeal diseases due to poor sanitation, poor hygiene or unsafe drinking water.

Another challenge is the impact of global warming and climate change. Changes in temperature, evaporation and precipitation will have an impact on the region’s water resources, such as on river flows. Climate change has also increased the frequency of both floods and drought. Additionally, many of Asia’s cities and countries are low-lying and will be adversely affected by the expected rise of sea levels. Climate change will, therefore, pose a new challenge to Asia’s water problem.

WHAT MUST ASIA DO?
The most important thing is, surprisingly, not about money or technology. It is about governance. The reason is this. What is lacking in Asia is not money or technology, it is political will and good governance. If the leaders of Asia were to decide that by 2030 no one in their respective countries will lack access to clean and affordable drinking water, and if they would appoint competent and honest people to take charge, the problem will be solved. The present situation is that no such political will exists in many countries and their water utilities or authorities are often both incompetent and corrupt. The bottom line is this: If Phnom Penh in Cambodia can solve its water problem, there is no reason why other Asian cities and countries can’t do the same.

The second necessity is for Asian governments, both at the national and local levels, to appoint a minister or a senior official to be in charge of water. In Singapore, we have a minister in charge of the environment and water. If this is not feasible, then the second-best option is to have a well- coordinated, multi-agency approach to water. Asian leaders ought to put the provision of safe and affordable drinking water to all their citizens as a top national priority. They should then develop an appropriate strategy and execute it consistently and effectively. One lesson that the rest of Asia can learn from the experiences of Japan, South Korea and Singapore is that a good water policy can be an engine of economic growth and national prosperity.

The third requirement is to mould the public attitude towards water by, among other things, getting the price of water right. Although the UN has recognised as a human right a person’s access to clean water, it does not mean that water should be provided for free. Water is a precious resource and, if it is provided for free, the consumers will have an indifferent and wasteful attitude towards it. It is, therefore, essential to charge the consumers for the price of water. The price of water should not be subsidised by the taxpayers. Instead, financial assistance can be given to needy families and individuals to help them pay for their water.

The fourth action is to promote efficiency in the use of water. This applies to domestic consumption, industrial consumption and agricultural consumption. The largest consumer of freshwater in the world is agriculture. The current system of irrigation is centuries old and inefficient. The drip irrigation is much more efficient. We need a revolutionary breakthrough in the use of water in agriculture. In many cities, a lot of water is lost through leakage or theft. To reduce the leakage, old infrastructure should be replaced.

Theft of water can be eliminated by strict law enforcement. Industries can increase their water efficiency by recycling their waste water. Seawater can be used for process cooling where it is available. In cities and places such as Singapore and California, the recycling of water may be a viable option. There are many ways in which water can be used more efficiently.

The fifth requirement is to embrace integrated water resources management (IWRM). What does this mean? It means breaking out of our silos and taking a holistic, systemwide approach to water.

In the case of Singapore, it means protecting our water ecosystem, using waste water as a resource, and maximising the use of unconventional resources, such as recycled water, desalinated water and groundwater. By implementing IWRM, Singapore has closed the water loop.

The sixth and final requirement is finance, technology and innovation. Financing for water-related projects is available from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Private capital is also available because water is a viable industry. There are many new technologies and innovations which will enable Asian countries and cities to reduce the cost of water, to reduce the cost of waste- water treatment and the costs of desalination and the recycling of water.

SHARING SINGAPORE’S EXPERIENCE
Singapore is a small, highly urbanised and water-scarce city. It has a population of over five million and a large manufacturing economy. Water security is, therefore, a strategic imperative for Singapore.

Faced with this dire situation, Singapore has been successful in improving the supply of water, both in quantity and efficiency, on the one hand, and, moderating the demand for water, on the other.

The water leakage in Singapore is 5 per cent. The demand for water has been gradually reduced. In Singapore in 2003, the per capita consumption was 165 litres. This fell to 151 litres by 2015. Our target is to reduce it further to 140 litres by 2030. Our long-term ambition is to emulate cities such as Hamburg in Germany, where the annual per capita consumption of water is as low as 110 litres.

On the supply side, the introduction of Newater in 2003 was a game changer. At present, Singapore’s Newater plants can meet 30 per cent of the nation’s needs. This will go up to 55 per cent by 2060. Complemented by desalinated water and rainfall, Singapore’s water future looks reasonably secure.

CONCLUSION
I support the UN’s goal that by 2030 every person will have access to safe and affordable drinking water. At present, about 269 million Asians do not have such access. To reduce this number to zero in 14 years is a formidable task. I believe, however, that with political will, good governance and sound water policy, the goal can be achieved.

The shifting geography of the country’s southern coast creates both opportunity and challenge.
Eight remote shoals twenty kilometres east of Bauphal upazila town in Patuakhali, which have hosted basic farming and fishing communities for about sixty years, were in 2014 formalised into a new administrative unit: Chandradip union.
Despite formal recognition as a new community, the islands with a population of around 20,000 people retain many frontier challenges.
For many residents, using river or pond water for drinking is still the only practical option.
“We have to collect drinking water from the Tentulia River,” says Rahima Begum, a housewife from one of the shoals, Char Kachua.
In another part of Char Kachua, villagers draw water not from the river but from the lone pond at Ismail Howlader’s house.
“Bathing, washing and drinking: all is done with pond water.
“People in our community are deprived of many rights including access to pure drinking water.
We face a shortage of tube wells.” Yet the shoals of Chandradip are not alone.
Still it is to be hoped that the hardship of daily lives in such remote communities may soon find a little respite, the respite that access to safe drinking water can bring.

Speaking at the day celebration ceremony held March 21, Dessie Town Potable Water Service Office Manager Muktar Ahemed said that although Dessie has been known for its potable water supply, frequent power interruption has been a challenge to dwellers.
As the town is situated in mountainous areas, the office could not supply water regularly without electric power.
We have to raise citizens’ awareness about water management."
The Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity (MoWIE) State Minister Kebede Gerba said that the Ministry is aggressively working hard to achieve nation’s GTP II potable water coverage plan.
Currently, nation’s potable water coverage has reached 61 per cent.
It works hard to reach the coverage 67 per cent by the end of this fiscal year.
"Waste-water should be treated before it affects our environment and human health.
Then when, waste water is used for human social and economic consumption it will cause for various human health and related risks," the State Minister added.
Therefore, waste-water discharges from households, industrial, agricultural and other sources should be treated before they contaminate the environment.
The recent WHO and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation estimated that by 2015 access to improved drinking water increased to 57 per cent.