World sewage plans 'should be abandoned'

Plans to build sewage works for the 1.2 billion people in the world currently living without fresh water and sanitation should be abandoned, according to the incoming president of the World Water Association, Michael Rouse.

Mr Rouse, a civil servant who is head of the UK's drinking water inspectorate, believes that sewage pipes are too expensive and too often drain into and pollute water courses.

Instead, he says, the world should revert to using human solid waste as compost and fertiliser and allow liquids to drain into the ground.

These revolutionary ideas come from the man whose job it has been to guard drinking water quality in the UK since privatisation of the water and sewage industry. He is about to head the body that speaks for professional water regulators and engineers across the world.

Mr Rouse is not against the United Nations drive to halve the number of people without fresh water and sanitation by 2015 - a target agreed at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg last August - but on his calculations this target means providing these services to 140,000 new people every day, a huge task which he considers impossible by traditional means.

Mr Rouse believes that instead of grandiose schemes that take years to plan and implement, there should be a concentration on community-led programmes. While fresh water could be piped in for drinking, cooking and washing, new style, locally made toilets, which separate solid waste from the liquids, could take care of sanitation. Reed beds or similar natural methods could clean the water before it is allowed to flow into the ground.

"If we started sanitation again from scratch in Britain, we would not do it the way we do now," he said. "Instead of flushing and piping all the waste away, we would collect the solids once a week like household rubbish, take it to a central depot and compost it.

"Eventually it would be used as fertiliser, itself a bonus in the developing world which would be able to cut down on expensive chemical fertilisers."

Mr Rouse believes that with out this fundamental change back to simpler methods, the UN will fail.

Mr Rouse and his organisation will be advancing these ideas to the world's water ministers at the World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, which begins on March 16 and is designed to turn the Earth Summit targets into reality.

To demonstrate that the ideas work, the WWA wants to develop five projects of dry sanitation in middle income and poor countries within two years - for settlements of around 100,000 people a time. It says the development and demonstration of dry and low water toilets, and urine-separating toilets should be subsidised. There should also be projects aimed at developing local and international markets for waste-related organics.

But unlike some campaigners Mr Rouse does not believe water supplies should be free. Currently, the poorest in the world pay most for their water, which is brought by vendors who charge up to 10 times the cost of piped water for a product of uncertain quality.

He says the key to success of providing water and sanitation is good government, transparent in its transactions and free from corruption. There also needs to be an independent regulator to check quality of water and price of the service.

The key then, he says, is to get motivated local communities to create their own systems, guided by professionals, and trained to take over their own services. Everyone in each community should have access to clean, piped water and a means to dispose of the waste.

"What we will be pressing for at the Kyoto conference is to turn the well intentioned words and targets into action," he said. "Too little is currently happening to have hope of reaching the targets but I believe it is still possible if we can get these demonstration projects going, and then show it can work on a big scale."