Khulna, Nabolok and the emergence of a new project

Monday 2nd - Tuesday 3rd September

This morning we flew to Jessore, apparently along with the Bangladesh national cricket team and their Aussie coaches.  At least Suman recognised them as the national cricket team, I just saw a bunch of over-preened young chaps who didn't seem to understand how an aeroplane seating system worked!  They'd also booked out the 'nice' hotel in Khulna, and the transport to the town, but anyhow, after a bit of hassle, everyone else on the plane managed to bundle into some alternative transport, and we got through the 2hr bumpy drive to Khulna without further incident.  We struck up conversation with a dutch gentlemen who was an ecologist with the EU, doing some work in the sundarbans around monitoring, evaluation and advocacy for their protection.  It is an area of mangrove forest, designated a UNESCO world heritage site, and an area under great threat from many directions - saline intrusion (due to diversion of freshwater upstream), clearance for development, pollution etc.  Its also first in line to go underwater as climate change affects sea levels.

Anyhow, once we arrived, we went straight out to the site they have prepared for a faecal sludge management (FSM) project of their own.

The access to these sites always seems to be through a rubbish dump.

Very flat site

The site is about 100ft x 72ft and is made up of compacted ground on top of old agricultural land.  There is secure fencing and a gate already installed.

There is a watercourse just on the other side of the fence along the top edge.  This would be where any treated wastewater would be discharged.

We had some interesting discussions that afternoon, back at the Nabolok office.  Nabolok are WaterAid Bangladesh's partner in this region.

They want to have a facility that will treat FS for the municipality, and act as an exemplar project for others to visit and learn from.  They hope to inspire the City Corporation that the approach used is a good idea and replicate it.

They are also keen to have a closed loop process on site - so all processes from delivery to final product, happen in one location.  

I had a great design jam with their HR guy (see scrawls on the whiteboard above), who it turns out is a trained architect, and I think he could be really helpful in drawing up the designs.

We went over to visit their head office, and Chief Executive, in another part of town, as a courtesy call, and Suman explained the project to him.  Interestingly, he reminisced about the 'old days' when people would make their own fertiliser (compost) from kitchen waste and cow dung, but they do not like to do it anymore.  There is some work to be done to bring the knowledge and willingness back.

A lovely RWH model in the Nabolok office

 On Tuesday we had further discussions fine tuning the approach we should pursue, prior to a meeting with the City Corporation that afternoon.  I did some calculations around the relative sizes required to treat Khulna's sludge.  They estimate they have the potential to collect 6000L/day.  The City Corp have one 3000L vacutug, and the Urban Partnership for Poverty Remediation (UPPR) have three 1000L vacutugs.

It is not hard to realise this is way beyond what our solar dryers were designed for, ie small scale, decentralised, peri-urban/ rural application, and so we proposed a combined approach.  Sketching out the sizes of our solar beds and a planted filter on site, it becomes clear that they can actually do both:

Rough Scale Sketch of Khulna Site

This is just an indicative layout, to get a sense of what an appropriately sized planted drying bed and set of four solar drying beds (and associated reedbed) would look like on site.  There is still plenty of room for the required caretakers hut, polishing pond, composting centre and turning space for vehicles.

Initial calculations suggest with four solar dryers working on a 10day delivery/removal cycle, you could generate 1.2m3 of compost (1200L) every month.

For an 8m x 20m planted drying bed, if 2000L was delivered every day, then over 3 years (assuming a 90% water content) we would expect in the region of 1.3m depth of sludge build-up.

With both technologies on site, we could practically illustrate two different approaches to FSM, and show how each works at different scales and applications.

We hustled out of the office around 2:30pm for a late lunch, and I had about 30mins to prepare some slides for a critical meeting with the City Corp to get their sign off on the proposal...

Khulna City Hall

Meeting passed without incident, and everyone seemed pleased with the outcome.

We leave Khulna early tomorrow to stop off at Faridpur and check progress, before returning to Jessore and flying back to Dhaka.