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I. Background
The ReSource Institute's first model project began in 1988 in Juigalpa, Nicaragua, a town renowned for its cattle and cowboys. A popular ballad boasts that Juigalpa's rivers are made of milk and the rocks are made of cheese, but a closer look muddies this image and reveals why Juigalpa's children cannot stay healthy, even with rivers of milk and rocks of cheese.
Juigalpa is located 75 miles east of Managua in Nicaragua's Fifth Region. It is the largest city in the Fifth Region and serves as the regional hub for government, agriculture, and ranching activity. Many of Juigalpa's 35,000 residents have moved here from the semi-arid and sparsely populated countryside, often maintaining small farms outside the city while keeping chickens and pigs in their back yards in town.
In the central part of town, houses are made of cinder-block, separated by tall brick walls. Sidewalks and brick roads run throughout the city, ending where newer and poorer housing settlements have sprung up.
II. Pollution and Pathogens
Chronic water shortages are a fact of life for Juigalpa's residents. On alternate days only, drinking water is carried by a deteriorating piping system into the city from wells outside its limits. When aquifers are low, three or four days may pass before water reaches Juigalpa. People who live in homes not hooked up to this system use water from the Mayales river -- polluted from sewage upstream -- for both drinking and washing. All used household washwater is piped directly from sinks and showers into the streets or backyards.
Pollutants and pathogenic organisms, entering the aging asbestos water pipes through cracks and holes, make this growing city's water shortage especially dangerous for young Juigalpans. According to Dr. Xavier Luna, director of the regional health authority, nearly every child in the city has intestinal diseases that result directly from using Juigalpa's polluted water.
Before the arrival of the ReSource Institute's pilot project in October, 1988, all houses had either pit latrines or failing septic tanks.
III. Composting Toilets: Treating the Problem, not the Symptoms<
The ReSource Institute has built 35 waterless composting toilet facilities in Juigalpa. These aerobic compost converters have the capacity to accommodate over 2,500 uses per day. Wastes are contained in a concrete vessel and reduced in volume by over 90% over a two year period. The remaining products of this process, a humus rich in plant nutrients and a nitrogen-rich liquid fertilizer, are odor-free and safe to handle.
Only local labor (carpenters, electricians, welders, and seven teams of bricklayers) was used to construct the facilities. The tanks and the above-ground buildings were built with reinforced concrete, wood, cinder-blocks, or mined stone -- all locally available materials. A ReSource engineer living in Juigalpa organized and managed the planning and construction phases of the project.
Two Juigalpans were trained by the ReSource Institute to oversee future construction, maintenance, and promotion of the composting toilet systems. Each of these staff members worked closely with the ReSource Institute's engineer in Juigalpa during each phase of the project's development. These local experts will bring continuity and experience to future projects and they are an important factor in the long-term success of the pilot project.
The composting toilet facilities, called "SISA" (Sistema Integral Sanitario Abonero) in Nicaragua, were built in locations throughout the city. In 1989 one hundred homes were constructed as part of a new housing development. Twenty-five homes were equipped with ReSource composting toilets. The remaining seventy-five homes have conventional pit-latrines. Residents of the latter houses have barraged local ReSource staff with requests for the odorless composting toilet.
At a local health clinic, built in 1982, the flush toilets had already ceased to function. Clinic visitors used to be sent out to the field behind the clinic when they asked to use the toilet. Now doctors, nurses, and patients have two composting toilet facilities at the clinic built by the ReSource Institute with the cooperation of City Hall. Other sites where concrete composting toilets were installed include: an elementary school where special low toilet seats for the children were designed and fabricated by ReSource staff; an orphanage of 100 children with flush toilets that had water only three days a week; and the town's baseball stadium where visiting teams come to play the local Toros on Saturdays and Sundays.
In terms of cost this project's approach is immeasurably more effective than any possible efforts directed at the treatment of diseases resulting from the fecal contamination of drinking water. By containing and composting organic waste public health, soil heath and water quality benefit. The cost for materials and labor is competitive with septic tanks and is only a fraction of the cost of sewerage. This system of waste treatment is not meant to compete with conventional rural latrines. If aesthetic, health, and environmental costs are all considered, dry composting toilets prove to be the most economical method for treating excreta.
The ReSource Institute staff in Juigalpa has led workshops on the relation between sanitation and composting for hundreds of residents. These workshops were conducted at schools, a local agricultural university, a health clinic, City Hall, an orphanage, and neighborhood community meetings. Acceptance of the technology and understanding of the system was greatly improved as a result of these meetings and workshops.
The first steps have been taken to establish the benefits of the composted end-product from the toilets. Over a twelve month period, a series of chemical and bacteriological tests on the liquid were documented by the Institute in collaboration with the National Engineering University and a private laboratory in Managua. In local field trials, conducted with the German Pomares Agricultural Institute, corn yields were doubled, compared to plots that received no fertilizer, by using the liquid fertilizer from the composting toilets. SISA fertilized corn yields were nearly equal to the commercial 10-10-10 chemically fertilized plots. The Institute has designed a comprehensive program that includes health guidelines for using the liquid fertilizer and provides farmers with the information they need to use the fertilizer.
The performance of ReSource composting toilets in Juigalpa has been superior to that of all other sanitation technologies in use there. The first important test passed is the aesthetic one of odorlessness. For this reason alone the demand has outstripped the ReSource Institute's capacity to construct new composting toilet facilities.
In an effort to meet that demand, a local enterprise -- started with ReSource technical and administrative support -- has begun constructing and selling the SISA composting toilet in Juigalpa.
IV. The Next Step
The next steps for the Institute's work in Juigalpa include refining system maintenance, expanding testing and development of washwater recovery for agricultural uses, and launching a popular education program to help plant the seeds for broader replication of the Juigalpa program.
V. Conclusion
The ballad masks a sad truth about the rivers of Juigalpa: awash not in milk but in sewage, pesticides, and other health-threatening pollutants, Juigalpa's poisoned water symbolizes some of the failings of shortsighted development. But by the same token, the waste recovery project set up by the town and the ReSource Institute offers some hope for the future of the townspeople and of the rivers that have been so pivotal to their lives. Given the support that it needs, the Juigalpa project will, in time, stand as a model for other communities of genuinely sustainable development: locally managed, environmentally responsible, and technologically appropriate.
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