International source book on environmentally sound technologies for wastewater and stormwater management

The deterioration of water quality and the consequence public health problems facing many communities worldwide have been recognised for sometime. The United Nations Water Decade (1981-1990) was a major initiative to address the need to provide safe drinking water and sanitation to the two-thirds world without access to these. These problems still exist due to the increasing world population, and the proportion of communities without adequate sanitation has remained at approximately two thirds. These problems are compounded by the rapid migration of rural population to the fringes of cities. This trend of urbanisation has been forecast to continue for sometime into the future. Communities growing rapidly around urban areas are also those with little resources and with low incomes. Urban managers are faced with the problem of how to provide adequate wastewater and stormwater services, and how to allocate priorities with competing demands for other urban infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and schools. Communities themselves are aware on a daily basis of the lack of services and are similarly confronted by the problem of how to overcome them with very limited available resources within the community. Although these problems are severe in urban areas, many rural communities are also faced with poor or deteriorating sanitation facilities. Developing countries experience the largest share of the problems described above. Countries in economic-transition also suffer from inadequate or deteriorating infrastructure needing restoration. Even in the developed countries questions have been asked as to whether the current way of providing wastewater and stormwater infrastructure is environmentally sustainable in the longer term