Technical Specifications CM 1600 TSS
Model CM Pressure max PSI Cleaning Power Flow Rate max Gpm Electrical Rating V Hz

1600 TSS Packaging

Packaging Packaging dimensions Unit dimensions Gross weight Palette quantity 40ft CTN quantity
4 color glossy carton 10.23 x 11.81 x H 23.6 in. 9.8 x 10.35 x H 22.4 in. 31.5 lb 48 pcs 960 pcs

Pump Description

Aluminum pump, with 3 stainless Steel pistons, asynchronous motor (no brush), for continuous duty with Thermal protection. Accessories Pressure regulation min 400 PSI - max 1600 PSI TSS Total Stop System: extends pump & motor life Turbo Nozzle VORTEX Trolley Gun and hose assembly 23 ft Lance with spray nozzle Foaming nozzle with detergent bottle Equipped with GFCI Optional Fixed Brush Rotary Brush

Product Description

Powerful cold water high pressure cleaner with pressure regulation (min 400 PSI - max 1600 PSI), Total Stop System to extend the pump and motor life. Supplied with trolley for a more comfortable transport. Equipped with foaming nozzle and detergent tank. Includes two lances, the Turbo Nozzle VORTEX to improve the washing power on stubborn dirt and an adjustable nozzle to be used in any cleaning situation. Ideal for cleaning garden furniture, driveways, house siding, cars, motorcycles, tractors and boats.
Sistema USA 1520 Yokel RD Evansville, IN 47711- USA

Tel. 9551 Fax. 9399

e-mail: info@sistemausa.com web: www.sistemausa.com

A Historical Perspective

The history of the disposal of human excreta is as old as human civilization. As a field of study, its history is short. In 1854, Dr. John Snow removed the handle from the water pump at the corner of Cambridge and Broad streets in London, thereby containing a cholera epidemic in the neighborhood, but doing little to stem the introduction of the bacteria into the Thames River. Over one hundred years later, sanitation practitioners continue to pay close attention to pump handles and less to pollution prevention. From privies to sewers and advanced wastewater treatment, we have exchanged one kind of public health and environmental problem for another. Some disease cycles have closed while others have opened. Industrial discharges into public sewers, water pollution from nutrient loading and chemical contamination, and freshwater scarcity are global problems all associated with "advances" in sanitation. Meanwhile, millions of adults and children suffer from diseases that could be prevented with on-site containment and treatment of excreta. The late 20th century rush to sewer has created a widening gap in access to adequate sanitation. The lion's share of investment in environmental sanitation goes to sewerage in urban areas, subsidizing services for the middle class and rich. United Nations statistics show that only 18 per cent of rural residents in developing countries have access to sanitation, compared with 63 per cent in cities. Nearly 3 billion people do not have access to any sanitary excreta disposal, a billion more than the entire global population when John Snow made the connection between cholera and the water coming out of a standpipe in London. Epidemiologists studying historical records can point to the impact of sanitation on peoples health. Life expectancy increased as access to clean water and sanitation increased. Sewers played their part, moving pathogens from more to less populated areas. Diseases like typhoid and cholera saw dramatic reductions in urban populations with access to sewerage. But we are only beginning to understand the long-term health
and environmental costs of sewers. And the world is a much more crowded place than it was when the first sewers were built. Abby Rockefeller, the author of the second essay in this book, "Civilization and Sludge: Notes on the History of the Management of Human Excreta," looks at the historical record and explains how unsustainable sanitation technologies were institutionalized. She notes that "the patterns of settled community behavior early split into two courses: one that unambiguously assumed there to be in human excreta a fertilizer value to agriculture, and one that did not regard it as having such a value, or that was at least ambivalent about its value." This schism and what it has meant for human health and the environment help explain the attitudes and practices that have deprived half the globe of sanitary excreta disposal, and given the other half unsustainable sanitation systems.

The offer of free lime, besides serving as an inducement to farmers to accept sludge on their land, serves another purpose. The regulations governing land application of sludge require the maintenance of a pH above 6.5 in soils on which sludge is spread. This 6.5 pH is needed in order to bind up the heavy metals precisely to prevent them from moving either up, causing bio-accumulation in life chains, or down, causing pollution of groundwater. There is an active debate between soil scientists and advocates of land application about this effort to bind up the heavy metals. This debate involves two questions: whether or not (from a strictly chemical point of view) liming works on all the metals, and whether or not it matters if it works, since the monitoring and enforcement of pH levels on farms is a virtual impossibility. There are many problems surrounded by intense controversy over the issue of land application of sludge. Its noxious odor is the first to be complained of though the least threatening to life. Disease from viability and re-growth of human pathogens in raw sludge, and other diseases caused by the sludge composting processes (the growth of certain fungi that can damage the lungs), are of major concern to many. But serious as these concerns are and serious as is the danger of toxic levels of heavy metals building up in the soil, sludge has another yet more threatening characteristic. Combinations of some chemicals can cause levels of disruption in life processes many times more dangerous than the effects of these chemicals alone. For example, recent research has demonstrated dramatic increases in the estrogenic effects of common pesticides when they act in combination. Whereas the endocrine disrupting effect is 1:1 in the case of the doubling of one single compound, where two or more compounds are combined, their destructive effects are not just doubled but, rather, in some cases multiplied and magnified to the order of 600 or even 1600 times. Sludge provides the perfect conditions for combinations of thousands of chemicals, and these could cause a cataclysmic devastation of life (Colborn et al. 1993; Arnold et al. 1996).

OECD countries equal another 8 percent of applied fertilizer. While urban organic wastes will not displace fertilizer entirely, they can help reduce excessive fertilizer use (and the pollution this causes) as they build healthier soils.4 Recycling organic matter would also ease the pressure on costly waste disposal facilities. Organic matter accounts for a third of inflows to landfills in industrialized countries, and as much as two-thirds in developing countries, and is largely to blame for the acidic leaching and methane problems that these facilities generate. Meanwhile, opting for a dry system of human waste management through the use of composting toilets, for example would free up clean water for more vital uses, and avoid costly infrastructure construction as well.5 Before extensive reuse of organic material can take place, however, certain changes in agricultural production and trade practices must occur. As organic flows extend across oceans, and as agricultural production becomes more specialized and intensified, nutrients inevitably accumulate in some areas. Centralized livestock facilities, for example, like the giant poultry- and hog-raising operations in the United States, buy feed from far away, and then have trouble disposing of all the manure they produce. Manure is one nutrient source that has commonly been recycled, for livestock and crops located on the same farm easily fed each other. But as livestock operations increase in size and become separated from agriculture, more and more of this resource is viewed as waste material.6 Such regression is also evident in some developing countries that mimic the nutrient management practices of industrialized nations. China, for example, used organic sources for more than 98 percent of the fertilizer applied to soils in 1949; today, because of rising labor costs, the share is less than 38 percent. On the other hand, some industrialized regions are paying greater attention to reuse of organic matter as the problems created by linear flows of nutrients mount. In the U.S., 23 states now restrict the inflow of grass clippings to landfills; this material is composted or re-used as mulch. And well over a third of U.S. and European sewage
sludge is now applied to land, though often with only minimal precautions for safe reuse.7 Continued progress in recycling organic material requires that it be viewed as a natural resource, not as waste matter. Such a shift in perspective will require education on many levels. Policymakers and citizens will need to learn to manage organic matter in ways that facilitate its reuse. Processors of organic matter, such as compost makers, will need to tailor their products to the diverse needs of different soils and crops. And farmers will need to understand how organic matter works in soils, and how they can avoid overuse of chemical fertilizers. Once this educational process is complete, other steps will follow naturally. Communities will close dumping sites to organic materials as people adopt environmentally supportive disposal technologies and management practices such as garbage and sanitation systems that segregate organic matter from harmful chemicals and non-organic wastes. Together, these steps will promote circulation of more organic matter. Recycling organic wastes and returning them to productive soils would be a large step toward sustainability for the worlds cities and national economies. But the current trend in most of the world toward greater dependence on extended, one-way nutrient flows facilitated by heavy fertilizer use promises increased ecosystem disruption, greater waste disposal problems, and eventually a negative effect on food production itself. As policymakers grapple with the multiple problems of todays burgeoning cities, they would do well to ponder the multiple advantages that emerge from the wise reuse of organic matter. By retapping this important natural resource, decisionmakers can ease the urban burden on several fronts. The Cost of Breaking the Loop When the natural circular flow of organic material is broken, two challenges immediately arise: the flow must be fed at one end, and emptied at the other. What once occurred automatically in a cycling system, where feed and waste chased each other perpetually now requires conscious intervention at either end. The inflow challenge is typically met

composting toilets, the water currently used to carry sewage would be available to agriculture as clean water.52 Where sewers are little more than feeder lines to irrigation canals, and where the sewage they carry is untreated, risks to human health are much greater. Raw sewage used to irrigate vegetables and salad crops is blamed for the spread of worm-related diseases in Berlin in 1949, typhoid fever in Santiago in the early 1980s, and cholera in Jerusalem in 1970 and in western South America in 1991. Even so, the risky use of wastewater continues in many developing countries. In the Mexican state of Hidalgo, wastewater from Mexico City is used in the worlds largest wastewater irrigation scheme, covering some 80,000 hectares. The effluent, which is 55-80 percent raw sewage (the balance is storm water), is barred from use on some salad crops, but other foods, including corn, wheat, beans, and some vegetables, are irrigated with sewage water.53 In contrast to wastewater reuse, application of sludge to farmland carries a different set of risks, especially where industrial wastes or household chemicals are part of the sewage flow. Researchers from Cornell University and the American Society of Civil Engineers have found more than 60,000 toxic substances and chemical compounds in U.S. sewage sludge, and report that 700-1,000 new substances are developed every year, some of which also enter the sewage stream. These substances include PCBs, pesticides, dioxins, heavy metals, asbestos, petroleum products, and industrial solvents, many of which are linked to ailments ranging from cancer to reproductive abnormalities. They are also a threat to soils: once introduced to cropland, for example, heavy metals persist for decades (as in the case of cadmium) or even centuries (as in the case of lead). Because little control is exercised over what enters sewers, the contents of a given load of sewage sludge can be highly unpredictable and potentially dangerous to people and soils.54 Although industrialized nations maintain standards for sludge reuse, these may be lax. Such standards in the United States are the least stringent of any in the industrialized world, with allowable levels of heavy metals an average eight times higher than in Canada and most of Europe. Indeed, Cornell University researchers have recommended that U.S. farmers
apply sludge at no more than one tenth the levels permitted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Moreover, testing in the United States is required infrequently as seldom as once a year for the smallest applied amounts even though the contents of sludge can vary greatly from load to load.55 Clearly, reliance on mixed-waste sewers and treatment plants, the modern way to process human waste, does not guarantee output that is safe for use in agriculture. Other technologies, most of which are simpler and cheaper than sewers and treatment plants, may offer greater possibilities for recycling wastes. Indeed, opportunities exist for developing countries to leapfrog past industrial nations by adopting cutting-edge technologies that are affordable and environmentally sound, and that help to close the organic loop by safely returning human wastes to agriculture. One simple and ancient alternative to sewage treatment plants is waste stabilization ponds, a series of holding areas in which sewage is retained for 10 days to a few weeks. Bacteria and algae work to convert the effluent to a stable form as it passes from pond to pond. Stabilization ponds require more land than conventional treatment plants, but they are much cheaper, simpler to build and maintain, and, best of all from a recycling perspective, more effective at producing safe irrigation water. A conventional treatment plant can reduce the number of fecal coliforms in a milliliter of water from 100 million to 1 million, a 99 percent reduction but not enough for use on crops. For unrestricted irrigation use, the World Health Organization recommends a fecal coliform level a thousand times lower no greater than 1,000 per milliliter and waste stabilization ponds can achieve this.56 One variant of the waste stabilization pond is a wetland modified to process wastes, the showcase example being the one in Calcutta. For more than half a century, sewage has been channeled to a wetland east of the city, where multiple ponds are used not only to process waste, but also to raise fish and provide nutrient-rich irrigation water for farmers. The system works by mimicking the interconnectedness of a natural ecosystem. Nutrients in the waste feed fish, plants, and organisms in the ponds. The fish, in turn, greatly reduce or eliminate algal blooms, making the final wastewater product more useful for agriculture. Water hyacinth

unevenly around the world, driving some regions to a heavier-than-necessary dependence on fertilizer, and leaving others with unhealthy nutrient surpluses. And concentration of production can swell nutrient streams until nutrient accumulations become unmanageable. The emerging lesson is that scale matters, and that too large a scale can lead to distortion and mishandling of nutrient flows. Even the scale of recycling operations can determine whether cities are successful in actually closing nutrient loops. Prospects for restoring circularity to organic flows may depend on limiting the scale of agricultural operations and some recycling operations so as to shorten and unplug todays linear movements. The globalization of food flows may be the sleeper agricultural story of recent decades. The last 40 years are widely heralded for their unprecedented growth in output, but agricultural trade and the displacement of soil nutrients that trade entails grew even faster than production. World grain output, for example, doubled between 1960 and 1995, but grain exports tripled during the same period. Indeed, growth in agricultural trade has outpaced production consistently since 1960, except for a short period in the mid-1980s. Today, more dinner plates are filled with food of distant origin, and more nutrients cross national borders, than ever before.68 The uneven redistribution of food nutrients resulting from increased international trade generates net losses in some areas, and net gains in others. Several countries in northern Europe, for example, suffer from excessive accumulations of nutrients, many of which are imported across oceans. An extensive European livestock industry purchases feed from as far away as Brazil, Thailand, and the United States. But the industry has outgrown the capacity of nearby lands to absorb its wastes, so manure has steadily accumulated. Indeed, early this decade, the Netherlands could boast the worlds largest manure mountain some 40 million tons worth.69 These accumulations, coupled with heavy fertilizer use, are responsible for serious pollution problems in the Netherlands. Nitrate levels in the countrys groundwater were more than double the recommended maximum level in the early 1990s. So saturated was the country in

manure is already partially decomposed, composting time is greatly reduced, to a week or two. The resulting compost is coveted by farmers within a 100-150-kilometer radius of Cairo, who pay for its delivery. The product is not perfect it often has high levels of lead and zinc but an effort to have households separate their organic garbage from other wastes before it is collected could largely eliminate this problem.79 The question of scale is often treated solely as an economic issue. From this limited perspective, bigger is better, because economies of scale typically make large operations more competitive than small ones. But equally relevant are ecologies of scale, under which larger operations may be more environmentally damaging because they reduce the possibilities for successful recycling. These ecologies of scale provide a more complete picture of the costs and benefits of large, centralized operations. Returning to Our Organic Roots As the drawbacks of todays linear organic flows become evident, interest in recycling organic material is growing. But a return to time-honored recycling practices is not simple in an increasingly urbanized and industrialized world. Many economies are deeply invested in linear flows of organic matter, and will require time to reestablish organic loops. They will also have to wrestle with fundamental issues of sustainability, including the maximum sizes of viable cities and agricultural operations, and the maximum extent to which food should be traded and food raising should be concentrated. But commitment to a series of five principles of organic matter management is a good first step; from these principles, specific policies can emerge to close the loop. The baseline precept for organic matter management is this: in a fully sustainable world, all organic flows must cycle. By this first principle, any instance of organic dumping whether of garbage sent to a landfill or incinerator, sewage flowing to a bay, or manure overapplied to farmland represents unacceptable waste of a natural resource. Just as policymakers and citizens would not tolerate the wanton burning, dumping, or burial of natural resources, neither would they allow organic
matter to be casually discarded if they saw its true value. Appreciation of the contribution of organic matter to sustainable urban living will require a diverse set of policies affecting the individuals, municipalities, and industries that produce organic waste and the farmers that use it. As a starting point, organic material can be turned away from traditional disposal sites using taxes or legal restrictions. The U.K., for example, has instituted a landfill tax designed to discourage landfill use, while several U.S. states have mandated cuts in organic inflows to landfills, or bans on particular kinds of organic matter, such as grass clippings. The U.S. has also banned ocean dumping of sewage, and Europe is set to do so as well. Each of these diverse policies closes another door on organic dumping.80 Outlawing dumping, however, is only half the battle. Viable recycling options are necessary to ensure that material is actually reused. Such options are best governed by two more principles (the second and third principles of organic matter management). It is a principle (our second one) that organic wastes should be segregated from other wastes. It is generally simpler and cheaper to prevent contamination of organic material than to try to clean up dirty material. Segregation of wastes from the beginning is the best way to do this. Once this precept is accepted, the next principle (our third one) can expedite the search for viable recycling options: those who generate waste must recycle it, or pay for its recycling. This variation of the polluter pays principle applies to individuals, businesses, and institutions alike, and spurs each to find the most efficient way to reuse material, and possibly to reduce its flow. City government can still play a large role in helping citizens and businesses to recycle, however. Armed with these precepts, the search for viable recycling options can proceed on different levels. Municipal educational programs, for example, can equip residents to take responsibility for their food and garden wastes. Sonoma County in California has reduced landfill inflows through a citizen training program for composting, and participants have cut their landfilled wastes by an average of 18 percent. Best of all, this and similar programs are cost effective: they spend $12 for every ton of

For the EPA, the trouble with sludge is twofold: first, the near doubling of sewers and therefore doubling of sludge as a result of the 1972 Clean Water Act; and second, the 1988 Congressional ban on ocean dumping. Municipalities have enormous quantities of this material and the EPA is in charge of regulating where it can go. For the rest of us, the trouble with sludge starts with the flushing of industrial tanks and ends with an unpredictable potpourri of chemicals, nutrients, bacteria, fungi and heavy metals. Eastman Kodak, Monsanto, Dupont, ITT, Procter and Gamble, Sun Chemical, Ciba-Geigy, Upjohn Co, James River Paper Co., 3M, the garage down the street, your neighbor's paint shop, your toilet and millions of other industries and households are connected to the network of sewers that cover this nation. Treatment plants have various degrees of sophistication, though most in this country have the capacity for what is called secondary treatment. Sewers bring to the treatment plants whatever domestic, industrial, and commercial sources pour, flush or dump into their drains. A combination of biological and mechanical processes render the wastewater "clean," that is, it satisfies federal pollution regulations. What can be extracted from the wastewater is either hauled away in trucks to landfills or is found in the sludge. There is no magic here. What goes in has to come out. The better the treatment process is for the water, the worse the quality of the sludge. The federal Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) attempts to keep track of toxins in the United States. The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group, in its 1996 report "Dishonorable Discharge: Toxic Pollution of America's Waters," used TRI data to estimate that 1.5 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were transferred to public treatment facilities between 1990 and 1994. 450 million pounds ended up in water bodies from the discharged "treated" wastewater. The rest over one billion pounds of chemicals are in the sludge, were broken down, or evaporated into the air. The Environmental Working Group believes that their numbers are "drastically underestimated."
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which sets the regulations on hazardous wastes, excludes domestic sewage. If you dump your hazardous waste into the nearest river, you are breaking the law. If you dump it in the sewer, you may be doing nothing illegal. The EPA does not include so-called "transfers" of toxic chemicals to sewer systems as an official "release" of a toxic chemical into the environment. The Clean Water Act does call for some industries to voluntarily pretreat their waste but looking at the Toxic Release Inventory numbers, it doesn't look like anyone is paying much attention to what is going down the drain. Selling the idea of sludge as a "safe fertilizer" started in earnest after the 1988 Congressional ban on dumping sewage sludge into the ocean. The first order of business was a name change: sludge had to go, so the Water Environment Federation (WEF), an industry-sponsored organization formerly known as the Federation of Sewage Works Associations, went into action. In 1991, the Name Change Task Force of WEF settled on "biosolids," defined as the nutrient-rich organic byproduct of the nation's wastewater treatment process. Change the name and you redraw the battle lines. It's not about sludge disposal anymore, it's about "organic" fertilizers, "biosolids recycling" and "composting." Consumers, gardeners, and farmers are confused, and rightly so. The Water Environment Federation (WEF), whose membership is almost entirely drawn from those who have a stake in the sludge production business treatment plant managers and operators, state and federal employees, waste management corporations, engineering firms, construction companies, and equipment manufacturers and suppliers became the chief spokesman for "biosolids." It wrapped itself in the language of environmentalism, and locked arms with the EPA. WEF received a $300,000 grant from EPA to "educate the public" about the "beneficial use of sludge." Dr. Alan Rubin, who served as the chief of the EPA's sludge management branch, was loaned to WEF in 1994.

The EPA continued to pay half his salary while he became the nation's leading cheerleader for "biosolids." WEF hired Powell Tate, a powerful Washington-based public relations and lobby firm, to draw up the strategic and communications plan to push public acceptance of "biosolids." This 44-page document laid the groundwork for an all-out assault on those who question the safety of using sludge as a fertilizer. Publications on "biosolids recycling" were churned out at an impressive speed. The level of confidence in biosolids from these publications put out by state environmental protection agencies, industry-sponsored nonprofits, and waste management companies such as Wheelabrator Water Technologies is unwavering. They do not flinch when they say that "the amounts of metals from biosolids application are usually no larger that those that exist naturally in soil. In fact, many of these trace metals are beneficial or essential nutrients for people. These metals are common ingredients in vitamin tablets and enriched breads and cereals" (from a Wheelabrator brochure titled "What New England Should Know About Biosolids Recycling and Land Application"). After the name change and marketing behind it were put into place, the next step in the sludge shenanigans was regulatory revision. The use or disposal of sewage sludge is regulated by the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 40, Part 503 (colloquially called "503s"). In 1992 those regulations were revised, relaxing the standards in each risk category. A 1989 letter from the commissioner of New York's Department of Environmental Protection, Harvey Schultz, to William Reilly, the head of the EPA, is an example of the kind of pressure the EPA was under to change its standards. Schultz wrote that "the City of New York found that compliance with the pollutant standards (503s) will be difficult, if not impossible to achieve for 80% of the city's sludge." The 1992 revisions of the 503s reflected the commissioner's concerns. Acceptable cumulative load limits (accumulated amounts) increased for every heavy metal regulated by the 503s: lead rose from 110 to 265 pounds per acre, zinc jumped from 150 to 2,469 pounds per acre,
arsenic levels were raised threefold, and chromium ballooned from 467 to 2,645 pounds per acre. With these and similar changes in the 503s, "beneficial use" (the industry euphemism for disposing of sludge on farm land) became the mantra of municipalities and industry. Cities already had been spreading sludge on land or selling it as "organic" fertilizer to gardeners and fertilizer manufacturers. Now they had a new badge to flash, one that boosted their profile and further legitimized their actions. The 503s regulate 10 heavy metals, pathogen (disease-causing organism) levels, reporting, record keeping, application and management. Dioxins and most of the 700 to 1,000 new chemicals added annually to the 60,000 chemicals currently used by U.S. industry are not regulated. The rules are "self-implementing," meaning the government conducts no oversight, and any testing is done by the sludge producers themselves. A 1999 publication from Cornell University's extension service recommends that farmers "limit the total cumulative load of metals in soil to no more than 1/10 the cumulative loading limits set under federal 503 regulations." Why? Because some heavy metals ingested by aquatic organisms, wildlife and humans can cause physiological mayhem: troubles like kidney disease, hypertension, liver damage, neural damage, structural change in tissues, and reproductive problems. On average, the 503 regulations for cumulative loading of heavy metals are eight times higher than those set in Denmark, Canada, the European Economic Community, France and the Netherlands. Why the discrepancy? Europe uses "non-degradation standards" aimed at preserving farmland free from contamination for future generations. The EPA uses "risk assessments," which seem to have floating benchmarks, a high tolerance for risk, and no consideration for the synergistic effect of the chemicals in municipal sewage sludge. (Combined, some chemicals are much more dangerous than they are as individual substances.)

capacity whether for profit or nonprofit will provide the fuel and the vehicle for bringing to scale the composting toilet technology. Conclusion RCTs represent a step forward in the struggle for clean water, a healthier population, and access to safe and effective organic fertilizers in Mexico. The technology eliminates environmental contamination by containing excreta in a sealed treatment tank, while at the same time converting materials inside the tank into safe and nutrient-rich fertilizers via a chemical-free biological process. Appropriate technology projects and technology transfer programs should anticipate consumer demand for the product and have a plan of action to satisfy such demand ready for implementation. Understanding how to meet the demand for new technologies while incorporating traditional demands (such as the demand for aesthetic quality and simplicity in maintenance) is critical for any program's long-term success. The organization introducing the technology must be involved long enough in to assure its place as a functional and sustainable technology.
7. Improving Water Supply and Sanitation with Microcredit

Stephen J. Latham

Introduction Microcredit can serve as a catalyst to help the extreme poor of developing countries take active measures to maximize their access to sustainable water supply and sanitation (WS&S) services, especially in peri-urban areas. Microcredit, also called 'microfinance' and 'microlending,' is defined as the provision of small loans of working capital to the self-employed poor. Small amounts of capital, typically $50 to $300, can make the difference between absolute poverty and a thriving business generating enough income to feed the family, send kids to school, and build decent housing. 86 The World Health Organization has defined reasonable access to safe drinking water or water supply in urban areas as "access to piped water or a public standpipe within 200 meters of a dwelling or housing unit." Urban areas with access to sanitation services are defined as "urban populations served by connections to public sewers or household systems such as pit [latrines], pour-flush latrines, septic tanks, communal toilets, and other such facilities."87 There is a strong correlation between those who live in extreme poverty and those who lack access to basic services, such as WS&S. Microcredit effectively pulls the poorest people out of the poverty trap, opening new avenues for them that otherwise would not have existed. Improved incomes through microcredit can provide the poor with the means to lead healthier and more productive lives, as it enables them to better afford basic services such as WS&S. However, microcredit, in and of itself, cannot guarantee that basic WS&S services are being provided to the poor. Some argue that there is a subtle question of causation; that is, whether demand for WS&S is a consequence or a cause of economic

development. Some say that the effect of improving sanitation in urban areas is to increase property values and to act as a catalyst for small business development.88 The sad truth is that those who need WS&S services the most are typically those who lack the economic, political, and technological means to obtain it. Traditionally, those who do not have WS&S services live in abject poverty and within vulnerable geographic regions, such as peri-urban areas. Peri-urban areas otherwise known as informal settlements, squatter settlements, slums, marginal urban communities, shantytowns, barrios and favelas are home to an estimated 600 million people worldwide. Governments do not legally recognize many of these poor urban communities. Often they are built on land that nobody wants: on steep slopes, flood plains or near dumps. The urban fringes of Tegucigalpa are a good example. On these unsafe sites, the poor crowd into shacks made of cast-off materials. 89 Worldwide, the urban population is expected to double in 10 years, while the number of urban poor is expected to double in 5 years. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a third of the urban dwellers in developing countries live in substandard housing or are homeless. Half of them are children. The urban poor have the worst health status even worse than their rural poor counterparts. For example, recent studies have shown that infant mortality rates are far higher in poorer sections of many cities than in wealthier sections.90 Although some comparisons between urban and rural areas indicate that urban health is better than rural health, those comparisons tend to be distorted by the good health of the affluent urbanites and the omission of data on the urban poor.91 Despite $100 billion in investments, the International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade started in1980 to improve access to water and sanitation fell short of meeting its goals. During the decade, the number of urban people with adequate water increased about 80 percent, and the number of urban people with adequate sanitation increased about 50 percent. But the rapid rise in urban populations offset these gains.92

Maximizing WS&S Coverage Two questions need to be asked when it comes to the WS&S issue: (a) How can the provision of WS&S be maximized for the greatest number of people with the greatest need, while concurrently ensuring the quality and safety of the services? (b) How can the provision of WS&S be financed in a way that leads to the highest degree of cost-recovery and financial self-sufficiency? A new approach is needed when it comes to addressing the old but persistent problem of inadequate access to WS&S. Microcredit initiatives can provide a viable solution to fill the gap of inadequate access to WS&S, while simultaneously equipping the poor with a viable financing mechanism to make it a reality. The World Bank in a recent biennial publication The World Development Report: Development and Environment noted that not enough attention has been given to the environmental problems that damage the health and productivity of the largest number of people, especially the poor. In the report, priorities for action included: (1) one-third of the world's population that has inadequate sanitation, and (2) 1 billion without safe water.93 The effects of the lack of coverage on health are shocking, resulting in:
900 million cases of diarrheal diseases every year, which cause the deaths of more than 3 million children (two million of these deaths could be prevented if adequate sanitation and clean water were available) 200 million people suffering from schistosomisis or bilharzia at any time 900 million people afflicted by hookworm
The World Bank claims that improving access to water supply and sanitation would be "the single most effective means of alleviating human distress."94 Substandard or non-existent WS&S services have an
adverse impact on human health and productivity, impacting an individual's ability to generate income. Lack of work, as with lack of access to water and sanitation, compromises dignity and self worth, which can lead to further undesirable ramifications for quality of life on a societal level. Impact on Poor Women and Children Urban poor women of childbearing age are at high risk for disease and early death. Worse off are the growing numbers of single females heading households. Children of single females heading urban households are often the poorest of the poor.95 Three myths of urbanization based on denial and defeat It is only recently that foreign assistance agencies have begun to address urban environmental issues. The rural bias was inherent in an earlier period when the need to respond to rural issues surpassed the need to address the urban agenda. However, the rural focus should not come at the expense of addressing urban issues especially since a substantial demographic shift is taking place from rural to urban areas. As recognized by the U.S. Agency for International Development's Environmental Health Project, three widely accepted myths have obscured and confounded practitioners in the development field for too long. Myth number one: the growth of cities can be slowed. The growth of cities is inevitable and unstoppable. For the next 30 years, a "tidal wave" of migrants will flood the world's cities, mostly in developing countries. By 1990, there were 1.5 billion people living in cities. By 2025, the number will swell to 4 billion. Efforts to stop or slow the growth of cities have been largely ineffective, partly because cities are perceived as being able to offer opportunities for jobs, education, and better health. 60 percent of urban growth is attributable to babies born to people who are already in urban areas.

recognizes the complementarity between microcredit and human health. At the Microcredit Summit held in Washington, D.C. in 1997, she argued that wealth could not be substituted for health, nor does wealth guarantee health. If a microcredit loan recipient is not healthy owing to substandard living or working conditions, can one reasonably expect the micro-entrepreneur to fully repay his/her loan on time? Grameen Bank and WS&S The Grameen Bank model unlike most other microcredit programs worldwide (a notable exception being a pilot project by Project Hope) has recognized and acted upon the complementarities between health, access to safe WS&S, and microcredit. The Grameen Bank makes available to its borrowers loans for basic water supply and sanitation. Unlike circumstances for microcredit groups in general, the health of Grameen Bank members is significantly better than nonmembers of similar socio-economic class. Health messages are delivered as part of normal group activities at the Grameen Bank at hardly any additional cost. The inside page of savings passbooks contains a "saline poem," providing instructions for oral rehydration therapy.99 Credit as a means, not an end In viewing the complementarity between microcredit and health, it is useful to point out that microcredit is not an end in and of itself, but merely a means to provide access to credit for the extreme poor so that they can improve their quality of life.100 It would be a mistake by the microcredit community to view microcredit as an end in and of itself. In so doing, the microcredit movement would in effect be viewing poverty as a unidimensional phenomenon, which it clearly it is not. Failing to recognize the direct linkages between human health, environmental integrity, and economic prosperity, poverty is reduced to a single limiting factor material well-being. It is important to view poverty as a multisectoral issue, of which lack of income is but one manifestation. Other dimensions of poverty include (but are not limited to)
malnutrition, lack of education, and deprivation of women from the same opportunities enjoyed by their male counterparts. Optimal economic allocation and WS&S For illustrative purposes, assume that a developing country city has an efficiently run, centrally provided WS&S system. Although advocates of centralized WS&S in developing countries would argue that pipelines efficiently allocate water and sewage from source to destination, in practice it has been estimated that 40 percent of the water pumped in the network never reaches its destination owing to leakage in the pipes. Under this scenario, centralized WS&S provision is not an optimal delivery system, economically speaking. Optimal economic scale and WS&S Once it has been answered whether WS&S provision is optimally allocated, then the optimal scale issue must be addressed both in terms of economic and ecological sustainability. By considering the economic dimension of optimal scale, one must ask the following questions: Can a municipal government afford to keep up with the operations and maintenance (O&M) of the current centralized WS&S system? What happens when the system is overloaded, as more people migrate to the cities than can be absorbed by the infrastructure's limitations? Optimal ecological scale and WS&S Following a careful consideration of the economic dimension of optimal scale, the same question with respect to the optimal scale from an ecological standpoint can be asked. Is there enough water to feasibly offer centrally provided WS&S services for all of the inhabitants of the city not to mention those who are increasingly migrating to the urban marginal communities? Yet another question is: If the city's municipal government cannot keep pace with the current population's WS&S needs which are connected to the city's grid, can one reasonably expect the government to be able to provide for the consequent growth in the