Sustainable Community-Based Drinking Water Treatment in Ghoshpur, West Bengal

Abstract

Approximately two million people in West Bengal’s North 24-Parganas district in India consume tube well water with arsenic concentrations above the World Health Organization’s guideline for arsenic in drinking water. Elevated concentrations of arsenic can cause a wide range of diseases including various forms of lethal cancer. One such affected region is the adivasi para Ghoshpur in North 24-Parganas which is home to a disadvantaged community of indigenous Indians (approx. 675 individuals). Despite knowledge on elevated levels of arsenic within aquifers in the vicinity of the community, untreated groundwater from shallow tube wells is still the inhabitant’s prevalent source of water for drinking and other purposes. In order to address this issue, the presented study seeks to identify, which out of four presented drinking water treatment technologies, is most suitable for the implementation of community-based (participatory) safe drinking water supply given the drinking water-related needs and assets of the community. Community needs are understood as the shortcomings of the current tube well-based water supply system and drinking water supply-related assets as the community’s properties and characteristics, which could contribute to the implementation and long-term operation of a drinking water treatment technology. In order to investigate drinking water supply-related needs and assets of the target community, a comprehensive community survey (needs assessment) was conducted among households and complemented by focus group meetings with key informants. Thereafter, novel criteria were developed to evaluate, based on extensive literature review and under consideration of findings from the needs assessment, the social, environmental, financial and technical suitability as well as sustainability of the four presented technologies. The developed criteria were integrated into a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) framework to determine the technology most suited for sustainable community-based drinking water supply in the target community. The needs assessment indicated that the current tube-well based drinking water supply system fulfils many of the users’ requirements such as quantity, accessibility, ease of use and cost efficiency but most importantly, fails to provide water of good quality. Thus, the implementation of safe (point-of-use) water supply is strongly recommended for which Multi-Stage Filtration (MSF) emerged as the most suitable technology. Yet, the needs assessment also revealed that an implementation of MSF would exceed the community’s financial, social and technical capacity . In order to reduce the risk of failure, continuous financial assistance and occasional technical support is recommended. In addition, education campaigns are recommended to build administrative capacities for organising the safe drinking water supply and awareness-creation on adverse health effects of arsenic contamination. The study showed that the proposed MCDA-based sustainability assessment framework is a useful tool to explore the suitability and overall sustainability of technology options for community-based drinking water supply and that it complements the existing frameworks for sustainable community water supply.