Rapid drinking water safety estimation in cities: Piloting a globally scalable method in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Lucas Rocha-Melogno; Rebecca Yoo; Osvaldo Broesicke; Achilles Kallergis; José Garcia; Estela Herbas; Annelisse Torrez-Daza; Ann Johnson; Daniel Boey; Victoria Beard; Seth H Frisbie; Susan Murcott; Joe Brown

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.11.119

Rapid drinking water safety estimation in cities: Piloting a globally scalable method in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Sci Total Environ. 2019 Mar 1:654:1132-1145. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.11.119. Epub 2018 Nov 12.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
² School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.
³ Marron Institute of Urban Management, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
⁴ Universidad Católica Boliviana "San Pablo", Cochabamba, Bolivia.
⁵ School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.
⁶ World Resources Institute, Washington, DC, USA.
⁷ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Norwich University, Northfield, VT, USA.
⁸ D-Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁹ School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. Electronic address: joe.brown@ce.gatech.edu.

PMID: 30841388
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.11.119

Abstract

Background: Systematically collected and comparable data on drinking water safety at city-scale is currently unavailable, despite the stated importance of water safety monitoring at scale under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We developed a rapid drinking water quality assessment methodology intended to be replicable across all cities and useful for monitoring towards achieving SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation).

Methods: We collected drinking water samples at the point-of-consumption for basic microbial, physical and chemical water quality analysis and conducted household surveys on drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene access from 80 households in the city of Cochabamba over 1 week. We categorized the household's water service level according to the SDG 6 framework.

Results: We estimated an average time requirement of 6.4 person-hours and a consumable cost of US $51 per household (n = 80). In this cross-sectional study, 71% of drinking water samples met World Health Organization (WHO) microbiological safety criteria, 96% met WHO chemical quality criteria, and all met WHO aesthetic quality criteria. However, only 18% of the households were categorized as having safely managed drinking water services. None met the criteria for having safely managed sanitation services; nonetheless, 81% had basic sanitation services and 78% had basic hygiene facilities.

Conclusions: This method can generate basic water safety data for a city at a relatively low cost in terms of person-time and materials, yielding useful information for inter-city analyses. Because 29% of samples did not meet microbiological safety criteria, 22% of the households did not have access to handwashing facilities and none had safe sanitation services, we concluded that Cochabamba did not meet normative SDG 6 targets when surveyed. Our study further suggests that water quality at point-of-use more accurately characterizes drinking water safety than infrastructure type.

Keywords: Peri-urban; Rapid assessment; SDG 6; Urban; Water quality.

MeSH terms

Bolivia
Cities / statistics & numerical data
Drinking Water / microbiology*
Environmental Monitoring / methods*
Hand Disinfection
Humans
Hygiene
Rural Population
Sanitation
Socioeconomic Factors
Water Quality / standards
Water Supply / statistics & numerical data*

Substances

Drinking Water