WASH Practices and Skills

eMi Communities of Practice

Yammer response from Kevin Hale, eMi WASH disaster response volunteer:

Skills for WASH work that come to mind:

1. Calculate:
1. The dosage of chlorine to add to a well or other supply to disinfect it.
2. The amount of chlorine required to provide a safe but effective level or residual chlorine for drinking water.
3. How much water is required for drinking for a given population
4. The amount of available chlorine in whatever source is available
5. The TDH required to pump a given flow of water from a well of specific depth.
6. The required kWh of portable generators to run such pumps efficiently.
7. The amount of appropriate fuel required to run the generators.
8. The probable amount of wastewater flows for a given population
2. Use & Do:
1. Use and understand the results of, and the differences between, water test kits.
2. On-site percolation tests to determine the size of leaching basins/leaching fields required to serve a given population
3. Understand:
1. Cultural norms with respect to latrine use in the area being served
2. Level of disinfection required for water uses, that is drinking/bathing/washing and the ability to communicate this to the population being served.
4. Different water filter technologies and the physical sizes of viruses, bacteria and helminths with respect to the filer sizes.
4. Principles:
1. High tech solutions are rarely appropriate in the undeveloped world and certainly not in disaster response work.
2. Whatever solutions WASH teams recommend must be easy to understand and easy to maintain, and that local population must be instructed in how to maintain them with locally available skills and where any necessary resources for maintaining them will come from,
3. As in any consulting situation, teams must understand that the 'client' had not had years of engineering education and experience and likely will not fully comprehend what is recommended without teaching them the basics.