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TOO MUCH WATER Heavy rains cause Apia’s inadequate and constricted drains to overflow, flooding homes and closing schools
APIA, SAMOA
During sunny weather, the Samoan capital, with its azure harbor, palm trees, and gleaming buildings—many rebuilt after the cyclones of the 1990s—looks like a picture postcard. During heavy rains, however, it can be a different story.
Much of Apia is built on low-lying land, parts of which were mangrove swamps before land reclamation and extensive urban development. Heavy rains cause its inadequate and constricted drains to overflow, flooding homes and closing schools. The drains are often choked with foul-smelling litter, vegetation, and even industrial waste.
Compounding the problem is that sewage from the city’s septic tanks and cesspools—the commonly used household sanitation systems—rises with the floodwater to contaminate drains, rivers, and streams. Storms are generally followed by a marked rise in stomach and skin problems from polluted water.
With only a few small, old wastewater treatment plants that service specific facilities, Apia’s wastewater collection and treatment system is grossly inadequate.
To relieve the situation, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is preparing a project to build a new sewerage system, including 1.5 kilometers (km) of sewers and a wastewater treatment plant with a capacity of 950 cubic meters a day. The system will serve Apia’s central business area and be linked to the national hospital and Apia’s main school.
The proposed Sanitation and Drainage Project, involving an ADB concessional loan of $7.8 million, will also clean and widen drains, rehabilitate septic tanks for up to 500 households, and provide regular pump-out services for individual septic systems, which will include environment-safe methods of treatment and disposal. In addition, the project will build technical and administrative capacity for providing urban services and management. ADB’s Board of Directors is expected to consider the project for approval before the end of 2003.
“Upgrading the infrastructure for drainage and sanitation will bring benefits to public health, improve the environment, and reduce flooding in low-lying areas,” says Nancy Convard, ADB Senior Project Specialist (Water Supply and Urban Development), Pacific Operations Division.
Such improvements cannot come fast enough for couple Faumui and Epenesa Togafau, who live in a valley south of the city. Surrounded by lush vegetation and overlooking a stream, their house appears an idyll. But standing on the riverbank, Mr. Togafau is upset as he looks at a pipe spilling effluent into the water. This is an overflow from an antiquated and malfunctioning wastewater treatment plant serving Apia’s main hospital, which is situated above their home.
" We used to fish for eels and shrimp here and sell them in the market. But 10 years ago, when we saw what was going into the stream,
we stopped "
- Faumui Togafau, homeowner
Residents here for nearly 30 years, Mr. Togafau, a sturdy 75, says, “We used to fish for eels and shrimp here and sell them in the market. But 10 years ago, when we saw what was going into the stream, we stopped. We have complained frequently about the pollution, yet nothing has been done.”
At the hospital, a spokesman says the city’s inadequate drainage and poor sanitation are factors behind outbreaks of typhoid and diarrhea, adding that ailments generally rise after major storms.
In one sprawling house in a low-lying part of town, Tutonu Tia’i, 52, shows a spot nearly waist-high on a support pole for his veranda.
“That’s how high the floods can reach. The floods cover our lower floor and we have to put the kids on tables. It takes days to clean up the mud afterward,” he says.
At the 114-year-old Marist Brothers school nearby, long-serving school manager Mika Smith, 67, says floods close the school for a few days two or three times a year.
“We ask the fire brigade to come and help clean up afterward,” he says.
Polluted water not only flows through homes and schools but also into the harbor, threatening shellfish and coral.
Apia’s water problems stem mostly from blockages in the drainage system and reduction in mangrove swamps that act as natural filtration systems, says Latu Kupa, former head of the Samoa Water Authority and currently a consultant helping prepare the ADB project.
“As well as clearing and widening drains, we will be installing gauges to monitor floods as input to design continuing improvements,” he says.
Apart from bringing health and environmental benefits to the population, the project will give impetus to Samoa’s public sector reform. Training will be provided at the Samoa Water Authority and Ministry of Works, as well as the Planning and Urban Management Agency (PUMA), which was created last year in response to a need for an integrated approach to urban planning and management.
NO CLASS At the Marist Brothers school, floods close the school for a few days two or three times a year
Samoa Water Authority and the Ministry of Works will charge affordable tariffs for the sanitation services to recover costs in a move toward financial independence of the water authority.
Importantly, as elsewhere in the Pacific, the Government is also dismantling loss-making functions and transferring them to the private sector, which is expected to operate them more profitably and efficiently.
For example, private firms will be selected to rehabilitate septic tanks in several hundred households. They will also empty tanks using vacuum trucks that transport the contents to lined treatment ponds and a government- and private sector-run pilot scheme to transform the waste into energy. Private firms will also operate and maintain the new wastewater treatment plant.
PUMA’s Chief Executive Officer Dr. Ieti Tuu’u Taulealo looks forward to the challenge of developing planning and urban management strategies with the help of the project’s capacity-building component—and involving the private contractors.
“A site has been identified for the treatment plant and other facilities, and once the green light is given, detailed design will begin in early 2004 with all project facilities completed by 2007,” he says.
Because the project should reduce flooding, Apia’s 60,000 people, who make up nearly 40% of Samoa’s population, can hardly wait.
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