Have you ever heard of A Town where the public phone booth was installed before people received water to their houses? No, it is not a scene from one of those back-to-past movies, where the hero goes back to the Middle Ages with a piece of technology from the 21st century; it is the true story of the suffering from severe water shortage of the people of the Lebanese village of Tannoura in Rashaya Caza.
Children are running back and forth with empty gallons in hands, while mothers are stacking gallons filled with water in the wheel barrow. A donkey is waiting at the side of the road for his owner to load it with water bins, while a water cistern is honking its horn to clear the way. This entire crowd is waiting for Zahia and her daughters to finish filling their last gallon from the Tannoura spring, "All this trouble with those gallons for so little water that I can only use to clean floors. This water is so contaminated I can't even wash my family's clothes with it", says Zahia.
Tannoura not only suffers from water shortage, but it also seems to suffer from all water related problems at once: villagers homes have never been connected to the municipal water supply, their ground water is too deep to be extracted economically, and worst of all, their only spring, which used to be their only fresh water supply, is polluted from wastewater infiltration. In fact, Tannoura's spring water is so contaminated by sewage that it cannot be used in dishwashing or even for washing clothes. It is only used for cleaning floors and irrigation of the few ornamental plants that manage to survive the long dry summers of the Bekaa valley.
For water provision, the residents of Tannoura have to buy water by the truckload costing around 10$ per load of 2000 liters, which is quite expensive for families living on an average of 450$ per month, and needing an average of 4 loads per month. However, not everyone can afford that, so those who can't are obliged to adopt water saving behaviors to minimize buying water and make optimum use of their available water. As a matter of fact, most households reuse their water 2 to 3 times before discharging it in the cesspit. Dishwashing and clothes washing water is collected to be used for floor cleaning, then recollected to be used for toilet flushing. In fact, sinks and showers are not a common option in Tannoura's houses because they consume a lot of water and do not facilitate water collection for further reuse.
If there was a global Water Demand Management competition, for sure Tannoura would win the first prize.
The village of Tannoura is equipped with a water pipeline network and two water reservoirs which were 1st implemented 40 years ago and then replaced after 20 years. But people never received water at home, because their network was never connected to the Shamsine water network, which supplies Potable water to Rashaya Caza. "Today these reservoirs and networks are corroded since they were never filled with water. The residents have lost faith in solving their problem and are now skeptic of any proposed project", said the Mokhtar of Tannoura, Mr. Moufid Abou Zor.
For over 20 years now, the Municipality of Tannoura, with the cooperation of various influential people in the area, have tried to solve the water issue of the village. However, no projects have been completely implemented and no promise has been fulfilled yet. Every 4 years, during the election season, projects are proposed, improvements are promised, people start hoping but nothing has ever been achieved. "The last of these promises came from Speaker of the House of Parliament Mr. Nabih Berry himself four years ago", complained Mr. Abou Zor, "We thought that it was going to be the end of our sufferings, but as usual they were all promises in the wind".
However, the year 2006 brought hope to the villagers when the Middle East Center for the Transfer of Appropriate Technology (MECTAT) initiated a Greywater Treatment and Reuse project in Tannoura. Funded by IDRC of Canada, the project aims at reusing treated greywater, which is the wastewater resulting from kitchen sinks, washing machines and showers, as an available resource that has not been utilized so far and which has the potential of making irrigation water available, in addition to boosting crop production in backyard gardens.
Thirty houses in Tannoura benefit from this project. Each house was equipped with a 4 or 3 barrel treatment kit, in which anaerobic treatment of the collected greywater takes place during one or two days, and then is pumped into a drip irrigation network installed in the garden. "Thanks to the greywater project, I can finally make use of my arid backyard, and grow vegetables and fruits for my children by using the greywater that we generate, at no cost and without any effort", said Amal Serhal, a resident of Tannoura.
The project is not only scientific research, but it also has a participatory social and educational component, in order to improve the quality of life of the residents. Women empowerment is also undertaken through several training and decision making activities. "Thanks to the training on food processing I will be able to save money by preparing my own food provision" said Ikhlas Abu Zor. As for Itab, the 18 year old member of a local committee for Greywater beneficiaries, she hopes that her participation in the committee would incite other women to take part in improving their village's environment.
The success of the Greywater project in Tannoura and the 9 others towns of Rashaya Caza in which the project is being implemented, would encourage the government to adopt smaller greywater projects, simple to implement and with results to be felt at the household and community level.
Tannoura is not an exception in the Middle East, thousands of towns suffer from the same problems as Tannoura, where environmental conditions worsened by political negligence are making water shortage one of the main issues of the 21st century.
DESCRIPTION OF THE GREYWATER TECHNOLOGY
Four plastic (PE) barrels, lined up interconnected with PVC pipes, constitute the greywater treatment kit. The first barrel is a grease, oil and solids separator and thus acts as a pre-treatment or primary treatment chamber, where the solid matter from the influent greywater settles and the floating components, such as grease and soap foam floats. This barrel has a large cover to allow cleaning it from both floating and settled material.
Once solids and floating material are trapped in the first barrel, the relatively clear water from the first barrel enters into the bottom of the second barrel. Next, the water from the top of the second barrel enters into the bottom of the third barrel, and in the same way it is taken into the fourth. In these two middle barrels anaerobic bacteria work on breaking down components of the organic material found in the greywater. The last barrel acts as a storage tank for treated greywater and as soon as it is filled, a floating device switches on a water pump which then delivers the treated water through the drip irrigation network to water 20 to 30 trees for an average family of 6 to 8 members.
Laboratory results indicate that irrigation with treated wastewater is safe and that there are no environmental and health impacts related to it.