Sanitation Situation Report of Lamahi Municipality, Volume IV 1 Sanitation Situation Report of Lamahi Municipality, Volume IV, 2019 Published by : Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) Editors : Bipin Dangol, Executive Director, ENPHO Rajendra Shrestha, Program Director, ENPHO Authors : Jagam Shrestha, Senior WASH Officer, ENPHO Buddha Bajracharya, Project Coordinator, ENPHO © Copyright ENPHO, MuAN, Lamahi Municipality 2019, all rights reserved. How to cite: Jagam S. & Buddha B. (2019). Sanitation Situation Report of Lamahi Municipality, Volume IV (2019). ENPHO and MuAN, Nepal. 2 Sanitation Situation Report of Lamahi Municipality, Volume IV Executive Summary On 30th September 2019, Nepal had been declared as Open Defecation Free country. However open disposal is becoming new common practice of faecal sludge management in the country. This is, in fact, not threatening only the public and environmental health but also challenging the Open Defecation Status. Therefore the goal of Open Defecation Free and Total Sanitation Campaign cannot be achieved without proper management of faecal sludge. The entire sanitation services chain, which comprises mainlye fivstages i.e. user interface, containment, desludging and transportation, treatment and safe disposal, should be taken into consideration for proper management of faecal sludge to ensure better health and hygiene of the people. Lamahi municipality is located in Dang district of province number 5, Nepal. The municipality was formed on 2nd December 2014 by merging then Sonpur and Chailahi Village Development Committee. The municipality covers an area of 327 km2 along the stretch of East-West highway in country. The municipality is home to 47,655 people as per census 2011. The municipality is divided into 9 wards. The municipality is located at geographical coordinate of 28° 7’ 0” N, 82° 18’ 0” E in lower region of Dang Deukhuri valley. The valley contains churia, a sub-himalaya range of siwalik in the south and the inner terai in mid. The west Rapti river in the south and its tributary Arjun khola flows through the valley. Ithas a humid and subtropical climate with average monthly temperature ranging from 14 degree Celsius in the winter to 28 degree Celsius in summer months. The average annual rainfall in the region is 1,198.26 mm. Lamahi municipality was declared as Open Defecation Free (ODF) on 2014 and there is no provision of sewerage system. However, 1.6% still racticesp open defecation. In general the existing onsite sanitation facilities comprises 6 types of containments namely pit, fully lined tank, lined tank with impermeable walls and open bottom, septic tank and biogas digester. At household level, the majority of houses have installed anaerobic biogas digester designed for the integrated treatment of animal manure, kitchen/garden waste and faecal sludge. While in core areas the technology is not preferred as the shift of occupation from agriculture to service and business. In core urban areas, either fully line d tank or lined tank with impermeable walls and open bottom are installed by majority of households, while the household which could not afford biogas digester or does not have cattle, has installed lined pits with semi-permeable walls and open bottom in rural area of the municipality. For the major survey such as household survey the application called “KOBOCOLLECT” was used by the volunteers selected by the municipality. As for the institutional survey door to door method was applied. After the fieldwork, all the e-forms submitted in KoBo dashboard were adequately checked for accuracy and completeness before analysis. Despite ODF, 97.6% of household have toilet in their house while 0.8% shared toilet with their neighbors and remaining almost 1.6% practices open defection. Here the containment is constructed to safely store the faecal sludge for a certain duration of time and emptied regularly. 37.9% of the households has Sanitation Situation Report of Lamahi Municipality, Volume IV i linked to biogas plant whereas 11.2% of the households is lined with fully lined tank and 0.8% of the households uses septic tank. Similarly in case of institutional level, 62.2% have connected toilets into fully lined tanks. In case of drinking water supply area, the municipality provides supply for 1298 households through 150 m3 of the overhead water tank. As the system was upgraded in 2012, now it provides supply to 3477 private taps whereas the major source is ground water extracted from deep boring at depth of 120 m. but still 50% of households rely on swallow groundwater extracted by hand pump or tube well. Here emptying is also one of the major components of the sanitation value chain. As from the data we observed that 38.6% of the containments were emptied twice a year followed by 25% of the containments with the emptying frequency of once every 3 to 5 years. As per data, 92% of the households have easy access to containments either by tractor or truck for emptying. Both the municipality and private entrepreneur have been providing the desludging service in Lamahi municipality. Several policies have been in placed to accomplish the sanitation need of people. Particularly, NSHMP 2011 has proved as an all stakeholders to develop uniform programs and implementation mechanism at all level. It strengthens institutional sets up with the formation of water and sanitation coordination committee at every tier of government to actively engage sanitation facilities as improved, basic and limited in line ithw WHO/UNICEF guidelines. The sanitation campaign throughout the country was focused to achieve universal access to improved sanitation. Here in this municipality both traditional and manual scavenging and mechanical emptying practice were observed. Unpredictably, while it was revealed that only 19.4% of households have emptied their containments at least once after the installation, other have never been emptied. This indicates towards high rate of seepages in the area. Emptying and transportation services have been provided by both the municipal sanitation section and private entrepreneur. As the perception of the preferred emptying mechanism of containments after it gets filled. majority of household’s i.e. 47.41% preferred mechanical emptying mechanism through contacting either municipality or private sector provider. Whereas 22.96% of households preferred self-emptying and 10.37% of households don’t have any preference. ii Sanitation Situation Report of Lamahi Municipality, Volume IV Abbreviations CBS Central Bureau of Statistics ENPHO Environment and Public Health Organization FS Faecal Sludge FSM Faecal Sludge Management MuAN Municipal Association of Nepal MuNASS Municipalities Network Advocacy in Sanitation in South Asia NSS Non-Sewered Sanitation System ODF Open Defecation Free PPE Personal Preventive Equipment SDG Sustainable Development Goal SFD Shit Flow Diagram UCLG ASPAC United Cities Local Government Asia Pacific Sanitation Situation Report of Lamahi Municipality, Volume IV iii Acknowledgment We offer our sincere acknowledgement to Mr. Kul Bahadur KC, Mayor and Mrs. Dewaka Belbase, Deputy Mayor of Lamahi Municipality, together with all ward chairpersons and staffs of the municipality for continuous support and valuable feedback during the study. We sincerely thanks Mrs. Gayatri Kumari Thapa, a focal person of the MuNASS Project in Lamahi Municipality for coordinating and mobilizing volunteers during the study. We would like to acknowledge United Cities Local Government - Asia Pacific (UCLG ASPAC) for financial support of the project Municipalities Network Advocacy on Sanitation in South Asia (MuNASS) and Municipal Association of Nepal (MuAN) for coordination with the municipality. We would also like to appreciate Dr. Roshan Raj Shrestha, Deputy Director of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Dr. Bernadia Irawati Tjandradewi, Secretary-General, Mrs. Asih Budiati, Regional Project Manager and Mr. Satish Jung Shahi, Communication, Outreach and Knowledge Management Officer of UCLG ASPAC. Likewise, we are very much obliged to Mr. Ashok Kumar Byanju Shrestha, Chairperson, Mr. Kalanidhi Devkota, Executive Director and Mr. Muskan Shrestha, Sanitation Advocacy Specialist respectively from MuAN for their gracious support. We are also very much grateful to Mr. Bipin Dangol, Executive Director and Mr. Rajendra Shrestha, Program Director, ENPHO for remarkable support and guidance during the whole process of the study. Together, we would like to thank all ENPHO colleagues for their support in the development of questionnaire for survey and uploading data in Kobo Collection toolbox. iv Sanitation Situation Report of Lamahi Municipality, Volume IV Table of Contents Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................ i Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgment .............................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................ v List of Table ....................................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................