First Pre-fabricated DEWATS modules installed in informal settlement in South Africa

BORDA in collaboration with the company HERING South Africa installed the first pre-fab DEWATS modules in the Frasers settlement near Durban, South Africa. These installations are part of the public private partnership between BORDA, HERING, eThekwini Water and Sanitation Department and the University of KwaZulu Natal. The objective is to compare life cycle costs and performances of 3 different pre-fabricated DEWATS modules with 2 common brick ones.

The Frasers settlement is part of eThekwini Municipality. It’s situated 40km north of Durban and consists of Indian and black South Africans. The Indian South Africans live in conventional houses with private toilets and septic tanks. The black South African on the other hand occupied land they don’t own and built shacks on it. Approximately 330 households live in this informal part of Frasers. In average each household consists of 5 to 6 people. Currently there are scattered pit latrines. Most of these don’t work anymore. The public sewer line ends 2km away from the settlement.
The responsible department of the Municipality, eThekwini Water and Sanitation provides Frasers residents now with communal ablutions blocks, i.e. standard container with toilets, urinals, showers and basins on 5 different sites. The waste water treatment is done decentralised by septic tanks. There is no effluent going to any stream. The treated wastewater flows into evapotranspiration areas. Three of the five treatment systems are designed according to BORDA’s DEWATS systems.
For the first time different pre-fab concrete modules are put in place, manufactured and assembled by the company HERING South Africa. HERING South Africa was established to contribute to solid and long-lasting sanitation systems (toilet facilities and waste water treatment). In Germany HERING Bau constructs and operates public toilet facilities at motorways and railway stations (also at the Bremen’s central station).

The objective is to compare the performance of the BORDA/HERING solutions (sites 1 to 3) to the conventional brick ones (site 4 and 5), especially the treatment capacity and the life cycle costs. In collaboration with the Pollution Research Group (PRG) of the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) Lars Schöbitz, volunteer of BORDAs partner NGO Decentralised Environmental Solutions (www.des-za.org) will undertake the sampling and monitoring. Lars is doing his volunteer assignment in the framework of weltwaerts-Bremen (www.weltwarts-bremen.de)  
Besides the informal settlement, the old and hygienically unacceptable school toilets of the local Sarasvati primary school with 330 learners in Frasers will be replaced by robust pre-fab concrete toilets from HERING South Africa. The wastewater treatment system will contain a biogas plant (bio digester), which provides the school kitchen with energy for cooking. This helps to partly substitute the currently used liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). All sanitation systems shall be commissioned and handed over to the new owner until Mid December 2011.