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RECOMMENDATIONS
SEWAGE FREE ANCHIETA CAMPAIGN Sewage Champions
209 Site Image Illustrating the Lack of Stormwater Management Options.
One of the most critical issues related to sewage management in the Occupation is the lack of a complete sewage infrastructure system.
One of the simplest ways to improve sanitation is through the development of a plan to hook up every household to the municipal system. Given the current barriers for sewage improvement in the Occupation, including cost of materials and level of expertise, improving capacity for sewage management will be crucial for improving the environmental health and livelihood of residents as well as improving tenure security. Currently, comprehensive knowledge regarding the state of sewage infrastructure in the Occupation is uncertain. In fact, Taubman Team members received different explanations about which houses have open sewage disposal, which are either connected to rudimentary septic tanks, and which are informally connected to the municipal system. This is problematic because even if one house is disconnected, negative externalities impact the entire Occupation. Thus, it is important for every house to be serviced by improved sewage.
SEWAGE FREE ANCHIETA
This component is an outline of a plan to build community capacity for decentralized sanitation options. In addition, it proposes participatory visioning in order to begin to consider how Ocupação Anchieta can become a model for sustainability. Community capacity will be built by developing a volunteer role of sewage champion. The role will involve conducting surveys to understand the status of infrastructure in the Occupation and develop an educational campaign. The visioning responds to design and project questions to how a sanitation project may be sustainable.
Decentralized sanitation technologies are a particularly good option for the Occupation to explore. The inexpensive nature of these technologies, coupled with their ability to clean the wastewater before it enters the municipal system or watershed, makes this type of technology ideal. Technologies can range in design from individual household level interventions (similar to the septic systems already in place) to clustered larger systems (Gutterer et al., 2009). The Taubman College Team proposes two stages of recommendations: one stage to address the status of sewage in the settlement and one to address future sewage visioning with the goal of cleaning wastewater before it leaves the Occupation.
