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Quote UnQuote"Education and awareness is must to improve water and sanitation situation in the country. If we failed to deploy all state mechanisms...." Top Bahadur Rayamajhi
Minister, Ministry of Local Development Read more...
Traditional Water Sources
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WASH NEWS DIGEST, February 27, 2012 [ back ]Date: 2012-02-27 00:00:00
WASH WEEKLY NEWS DIGEST Vol.5 No. 291, February 27, 2012
Dear Readers, In the recent times, the print media and TV channels have continuously highlighted about the improper functioning of water treatment plants and contaminated water supply by the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL). To know the ground reality behind the media coverage, NGO Forum too prepared for an observation visit to some water sources and treatment plants in the Kathmandu Valley. During the visit, the Balaju Water Treatment Plant operated by KUKL was found to be in a pitiable condition. The plant was found to be old, neglected and not maintained. The treated water collected in the reservoir ready for distribution looked murky indicating lack of basic maintenance and cleanliness of the reservoir. The covering roof of the reservoir itself was in dilapidated condition. It will not be hard for anyone who takes a glimpse of the reservoir to tell that the water supplied from the reservoir will not be safe. Despite the claims made by the KUKL officials about the regular monitoring and water quality tests, the water quality of water being supplied from the treatment plant seems ‘suspicious’. The dilapidated condition of the reservoir clearly shows the negligence of the water utility responsible for operation and maintenance of the water supply systems in the Kathmandu Valley. The pitiable condition of Balaju Water Treatment Plant has revealed an aspect of deteriorating water supply by KUKL in the Kathmandu Valley. With all these observations during the exposure visit, we would like to draw kind attention of the concerned agencies towards poor water supply situation in the Kathmandu Valley. We demand for immediate steps towards improving the condition of water treatment systems with necessary maintenance, repair and strict monitoring of the water quality ensuring safe drinking water to the consumers before the onset of monsoon. NGO Forum for Urban Water & Sanitation
| Water reservoirs contaminated | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 27 February 2012 |  Kathmandu: Observations in different water sources and water treatment plants of Kathmandu showed that the water of Baisdhara, Balaju reservoir was contaminated and not safe for the drinking purpose. In a recent field visit of journalists and representatives of Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited and NGO Forum for Urban Water and Sanitation to Sivapuri, Balaju and Mahankaal Chaur reservoirs and treatment plants they suspected that the water supplied from the Balaju reservoir was not safe for drinking.
| | Read more... | | Over 10 tonnes of Shivaratri waste yet to be cleared | | Posted by Administrator | | Friday, 24 February 2012 | Kathmandu: More than 10 metric tonnes of waste was dumped on the Pashupatinath Temple premises during the Mahashivaratri festival. However, Pashupati Area Development Trust (PADT) is yet to remove it from the holy site. Some 800,000 people thronged the temple during the festival, according to PADT. More than 10 metric tonnes of waste, including plastic bags was dumped.
| | Read more... | | Plan to make Pashupati zero waste producer | | Posted by Administrator | | Friday, 24 February 2012 | By: Nirjana Sharma
Kathmandu: The Pashupati area will become a ‘zero waste producing site’ if a government plan bears fruit. Zero waste is a concept that encourages the redesign of resource life cycles so that all products are reused. Solid Waste Management and Resource Mobilization Centre (SWMRMC) has forwarded a proposal to this effect to Pashupati Area Development Trust (PADT). The centre plans to make the area ‘zero’ waste producer in next two years.
| | Read more... | | Polluted water supply from Balaju treatment plant | | Posted by Administrator | | Wednesday, 22 February 2012 |  By: Rajesh Berma
Kathmandu: Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL) has been found to be supplying polluted water from its treatment plant at Balaju Baisdhara. A team of media persons, representatives from KUKL and NGO Forum for Urban Water and Sanitation during the observation visit conducted on February 21, 2012 found the Balaju treatment plant in pitiable condition.
| | Read more... | | Waste generated from Pashupati area to be managed as ‘Black Gold’ | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 20 February 2012 | Kathmandu: The government is all set to manage the waste generated from the Pashupati area as ‘Black Gold’. Dr. Sumitra Amatya, Executive Director, Solid Waste Management and Resource Mobilization Centre informed that the government is preparing to manage the waste from the Pashupati area as ‘Black Gold’.
| | Read more... | | KUKL defies Valley board’s diktat | | Posted by Administrator | | Wednesday, 15 February 2012 | By: Kalpana Ghimire
Kathmandu: Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL) has neglected the directives from the Kathmandu Valley Water Supply Management Board to supply potable drinking water to the consumers. The Valley board had directed the KUKL to supply potable drinking water after it found the KUKL to be supplying sludge and sewer contaminated water to the consumers.
| | Read more... | | ‘Bagmati Action Plan soon’ | | Posted by Administrator | | Tuesday, 14 February 2012 | Kathmandu: Various stakeholders on Monday said that conventional approaches being carried out while implementing urban wastewater management has raised more concerns. They claimed that the traditional approaches had added more problems in wastewater management. The wastewater management experts expressed their concern at a half-day workshop ‘New Paradigms of Urban Wastewater Treatment- Challenges and Options’ organized jointly by Centre for Integrated Urban Development (CIUD) and Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi.
| | Read more... | | Reservoirs in five locations to supply Melamchi water | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 13 February 2012 | Kathmandu: The Project Implementation Directorate (PID) is going to construct reservoirs in five different locations of the Kathmandu Valley to supply drinking water from the Melamchi Water Supply project. Ghana Shyam Bhattarai, PID’s Deputy Director told that the PID is constructing huge reservoirs in different locations for managing Melamchi’s water.
| | Read more... | | Water supply without treatment | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 13 February 2012 | By: Arjun Subedi
Kathmandu: More than 50 percent of the drinking water being supplied by the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL) is not treated well. Thanks to the electricity load shedding, the water treatment plants have failed to treat the drinking water well. Out of 21 treatment plants of KUKL in the Kathmandu Valley, more than 50 percent are not functioning.
| | Read more... | | Valley to remain thirsty for another 3 yrs | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 13 February 2012 |  Kathmandu: The contractor working on the construction of the drinking water project envisaged to rid the Capital of drinking water woes has demanded a two-year extension to complete the project. Melamchi Water Supply Project’s contractor China Railway Bureau Construction Company (Bureau 15), which bagged the construction contract in February 2009, was supposed to finish the task by September 2013. But now it has said it cannot do so until 2015. | | Read more... | | Squatters’ eviction after verification: Gachhadar | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 13 February 2012 |  Kathmandu: Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bijay Kumar Gachhadar has said the squatters living alongside the Bagmati river banks should be evicted once the real landless are verified. In a meeting with the taskforce formed to evict the people residing on the encroached river banks in the Kathmandu Valley on Saturday, he directed the panel to start the proposed eviction process once the squatters register themselves to receive money for house rents.
| | Read more... | | Preparations to uproot boring plants without license | | Posted by Administrator | | Friday, 10 February 2012 | Kathmandu: The Kathmandu Valley Water Supply Management Board is preparing to uproot the boring plants that are extracting groundwater without taking license from the board. The board is preparing to uproot the boring plants after the operators of the boring plants did not comply with the board’s public notices to acquire license to operate the boring plants.
| | Read more... | | Separate garbage bins still a far cry | | Posted by Administrator | | Thursday, 09 February 2012 | Kathmandu: Several months have gone after Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) announced distribution of bins to segregate household garbage, but nothing has been done yet. KMC had planned segregation of household waste in the beginning of the current fiscal. It planned to distribute two — for organic and non-organic garbage — in each of the 100,000 households in the metropolis. However, the plan is yet to be finalised, said KMC officials.
| | Read more... | | Govt drive to identify landless squatters | | Posted by Administrator | | Tuesday, 07 February 2012 | Kathmandu: The commission for resolving the problem of landless squatters has decided to identify genuine landless squatters across the country. The high-level commission is all set to identify the genuine landless squatters through the distribution of verification forms in 25 districts, most of them in the Tarai belt, from February 23 to March 23.
| | Read more... | | 87 pc of Saptari population defecate in open | | Posted by Administrator | | Thursday, 23 February 2012 | Saptari: Saptari district is a leading district in terms of education and public awareness in the country. However, it would come as a surprise to many to know that 87 per cent of the population of the district defecates in the open. According to RSS, this bitter fact was made public in a report released by the District Water Supply and Sanitation Division Office, Saptari at an interaction on 'Promoting sanitation in the Tarai' held at Portaha of Saptari on Wednesday.
| | Read more... | | Melamchi tunnel only 4 km in 30 months | | Posted by Administrator | | Tuesday, 21 February 2012 |  By: Dhruba Dangal
Sindhupalchowk: Minister for Physical Planning and Works Hridayesh Tripathy has expressed dissatisfaction over the delay in the tunnel construction of the much-awaited Melamchi Water Supply Project. Minister Tripathy had visited the tunnel construction sites for the first time after becoming the Minister for Physical Planning and Works to take fresh notes on the ongoing progress in the tunnel construction.
| | Read more... | | 23% of children deprived of toilets in Biratnagar | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 20 February 2012 | Biratnagar: A total of 23 percent of children from Biratnagar Sub Metropolitan City are deprived of having an access to toilets. According to Biratnagar Sub Metropolitan City, 64 percent of children have an access to modern toilets and 9 percent to simple toilets. A study carried out by the sub metropolitan city shows that 23 percent of children are habituated to open defecation.
| | Read more... | | 500 VDCs to be open defecation free zones | | Posted by Administrator | | Thursday, 16 February 2012 | Kathmandu: The Department of Water Supply and Sewerage (DWSS) is working to declare 500 VDCs as Open Defecation Free (ODF) areas this year. The department has already declared 265 VDCs and five municipalities ODF zones, an official at the department said. “The government is working to meet the targets of the Millennium Development Goals and the national initiative to ensure universal access to water and sanitation,” said Thakur Prasad Pandit, senior civil engineer at Environment Sanitation and Disaster Management Section.
| | Read more... | | WASH project in Bijalpura | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 13 February 2012 | Bardibas: People of Bijalpura VDC of Mahottari district facing water scarcity for years are now excited with the hope that their problems will be resolved. They are hopeful as works on drinking water was moved ahead by the Bijalpura Drinking Water and Sanitation Project for the Ward Nos. 6, 7 and 8 of the VDC.
| | Read more... | | New sewages spoil Halesi’s sanctity | | Posted by Administrator | | Thursday, 09 February 2012 | Khotang: Districts dwellers have been infuriated after a construction company made a way out for sewages to the holy cave of Halesi Mahadev, a shrine where the Hindus, Buddhists and Kirats worship. The locals have warned Swachhanda Nirman Sewa, the construction company involved in road improvement and black topping of the ongoing mid-hill highway that they would destroy all the infrastructures if alterative outlet for the sewages was not chosen.
| | Read more... | | Biratnagar sub-metro’s 7,000 houses without toilets | | Posted by Administrator | | Thursday, 09 February 2012 | Biratnagar: Biratnagar Sub-Metropolitan Office said that a total of 7,000 households of the city are without toilets and the family members of these houses have been defecating at open areas. The settlements situated away from the market areas, at river banks, poverty-stricken and illiterate population do not have household toilets and the practice of defecating at open areas is still prevalent at these areas.
| | Read more... | | Banke drinking water ‘contaminated’ | | Posted by Administrator | | Wednesday, 08 February 2012 | By: Rajendra Nath
Nepalgunj: Authorities have detected germs that cause diseases like diarrhoea and cholera in drinking water samples collected from rural and city areas in Banke district. Microbiologist Khagendra KC of the National Public Health Laboratory said they found the germs in water collected from tube wells and water pipelines.
| | Read more... | INTERNATIONAL | Indian woman rewarded for tough 'toilet' stand | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 20 February 2012 | New Delhi: An Indian woman has been rewarded for her "bold" decision to leave her marital home within days of the wedding to protest against the lack of a toilet in the household, an official said on Thursday. Anita Narre will be handed $10,000 by Sulabh International, a non-profit group, for refusing to defecate in the open and sparking a "toilet revolution" in her village in central Madhya Pradesh, according to the district magistrate.
| | Read more... | | Ensure Safe Water | | Posted by Administrator | | Wednesday, 22 February 2012 | It’s a fact that majority of the people in Nepal do not have access to safe drinking water. The urban centres often face acute shortage of drinking water as the government-owned agency is not able to meet the growing demand. As a result, the crisis of water is getting more and more severe every year in the urban areas, including the Kathmandu Valley.
| | Read more... | | Sanitation and Public Health | | Posted by Administrator | | Friday, 10 February 2012 | It a time when the government is coming up with a nationwide drive to improve the water supply and sanitation situation of the country, a news dispatch from eastern Nepal has stated that 7,000 households within the Biratnagar sub-metropolitan city do not have toilets. This only brings to the fore a troublesome picture, and there is much to wonder why a significant chunk of the Nepalese populace falls victim to water-borne diseases every year.
| | Read more... | | Has to work | | Posted by Administrator | | Friday, 10 February 2012 | According to the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), there are some 100,000 households in the metropolis generating about 350 metric tonnes of garbage every day. To manage the sheer amount of waste is a herculean task, which obviously has the KMC panting to fulfill. Now, with every passing day the amount of both organic and non-organic waste is on the rise.
| | Read more... | | Alternatives to municipal water | | Posted by Administrator | | Monday, 27 February 2012 |  By: Rachana Chettri
Kathmandu: At least one truck with something close to ‘Safa Khane Pani Sewa’ painted on its side can be found plying the streets of Kathmandu at any given time. Laden with metal tankers that haul their precious cargo from one corner of the city to another, these trucks provide most households in the capital with water for domestic use. Since the source and quality of water obtained in this manner is rather questionable, particularly for drinking purposes, many here have gotten used to procuring ‘mineral water’ bottled in sealed jars from retailers.
| | Read more... | | Waste recycling | | Posted by Administrator | | Tuesday, 21 February 2012 |  By: Hemang Dixit
As man emerged at the apex of the evolutionary cycle, he has for the present anyhow, taken over this planet. As his civilization progressed, his lifestyle also changed and moved from the civilization centre of Euphrates to other areas of the world. The domination of the Indo-Aryans, the Europeans and now the Middle-Easterners is there for all to see and think over.
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