Clustering of towns and villages for centralized wastewater treatment

Abstract

In 1993 the Governorate of Fayoum completed its master plan for wastewater management. The master plan presents a staged implementation schedule for the development of wastewater facilities for the Governorate, covering needs up to the year 2020. The targets are ambitious: in order to meet sanitary health standards, nearly two million people (or 60% of the total population) living in 70 towns and villages would need to be served with sewerage systems. Providing all these areas with separate wastewater treatment plants would be impractical. The centralization of treatment at a limited number of treatment plants for clusters of towns and villages has advantages in terms of manageability, cost and environmental protection. In the master plan the configuration of these clusters is presented. For that purpose a stepped approach has been developed: an approach in which aspects such as construction and operation costs of the facilities, existing infrastructure, the geography of the governorate, environmental impact, alternative treatment technologies and phasing of implementation have been considered. An important element of the stepped approach is an analytical model with which - from financial point of view - the optimum size of a cluster can be estimated. Variables of the model are sizes of towns and villages, distances and treatment technologies. The output of the model is a set of general design criteria which has been applied to the specific situation in the governorate. The model has contributed to the establishment of the Master Plan for Wastewater: a plan now used by the Fayoum Sanitation Department as a framework to initiate new projects and to direct the activities of other agencies working in the sanitation sector in the governorate.