I did an evaluation of FSM in Kampala recently. If you elaborate the question, I am seek and provide more data and provide it to you.

Dear Claire,

Thanks for your forum post. In my role as moderator, I have moved it into an existing similar thread and adjusted the thread title (is the new title suitable?). Please scroll up to see the previous posts (you might have seen this thread before). I have two reasons for doing so: One is to keep it all together in one thread. The other is to alert those people who have posted in the other thread before to this new post (they will receive an e-mail to say "new post in a thread that you have posted in before").

I like your idea of creating a global database for FSM costs per capita. You could e.g. set up a Google sheet where anyone could add their data (although experience shows that not many people will; I guess someone could try to gather the data and add it to the sheet).

However, I see a big problem in making costs comparable: The one case might only look at emptying costs and no treatment; the other at very basic treatment; the third one might include advanced treatment. E.g. I know the work you do in Haiti includes not just collection but also transport and advanced treatment (composting) for reuse. How would you compare that to a situation where someone just collects faecal sludge and dumps it into an existing treatment plant which may or may not work?

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. For those wanting to know more about SOOIL's work in Haiti with container-based sanitation, do check out their forum threads e.g. here:
forum.susana.org/253-mobile-toilets-cont...composting-and-reuse
and here:
forum.susana.org/17-fertiliser-soil-cond...soil-s-work-in-haiti

Hello! I work for Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) in Haiti. SOIL manages household and commercial container-based sanitation services where the waste is collected, treated, and transformed into compost.

We've been doing research on the costs of our service per capita, and we're wondering if anyone out there has heard of a database comparing the costs of different fecal sludge management systems. I know Dodane ( pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es2045234 ) has a great paper comparing fecal sludge to sewerage costs in Senegal, and I am daydreaming of research like that for all FSM options worldwide. It would be especially interesting to know the costs of the system paid by the user/household, and how that compares country-by-country.

If there is not already an existing database, do you have interest in compiling one? Do you have statistics on any one FSM system? Let me know! Thanks.

Dear Tobias,

You asked:

The model does not include the FSTP* for both system. Therefore I was thinking of making an assumption like costs of treating one cubic meter of faecal sludge ($/m^3 sludge).

Does anyone know a good assumption for Nepal, India, Bangladesh or somewhere in South Asia? Costs of treating sludge out of an ABR and out of a Septic Tank.

This seems like a pertinent question, and one for which we should by now have some guidance values. I take it you've already looked through those FSM toolboxes which I mentioned above and didn't find any cost figures?

I've also created this new sub-category to group these toolboxes together in one place on the forum:
forum.susana.org/component/kunena/277-fs...boxes-and-guidelines

Can the people who attend the FSM4 Conference in Chennai this week enlighten us if any of the presentations gave information on costs? Was it a big topic? Can anyone help Tobias with his question?

Regards,
Elisabeth

* FSTP = Faecal sludge treatment plant

Hello everyone,

I am doing a net present value analysis and an annuity analysis of onsite and DEWATS technologies for a town in Nepal. I developed a model which designs and calculates construction costs of an onsite system with a septic tank and a soak pit as well as a DEWATS (Settler, ABR, Wetland) system which is connected to a simplified sewer system which drains a neighborhood. The model uses the material and labour rates of the actual town.
So I want to compare the two systems on household costs in form of NPV and Annuity. So the two systems do not have the same elimination efficiencies and produce sludge of different qualities which makes it not easy to compare them.

The model does not include the FSTP for both system. Therefore I was thinking of making an assumption like costs of treating one cubic meter of faecal sludge ($/m^3 sludge).

Does anyone know a good assumption for Nepal, India, Bangladesh or somewhere in South Asia? Costs of treating sludge out of an ABR and out of a Septic Tank.

Thanks for any help.
Best regards

Tobias

Hi Laxman,

From what I know of the ESI methodology the costs account for three main cost component; the CapEx, OpEx, and CapManEx of that technology type.

The data that Guy and Mili used for the study was all from the published literature (of which there is very little). This introduces some uncertainty into interpreting the figures as you are forced to extrapolate national estimates from whatever is published, and as is well known costs are highly context specific and can even vary considerably depending on what combination of technologies are used in a chain, scale, and so on... The other challenge with secondary data is often that projects do not neatly record their costs in cost classifications, meaning to get comparable figures across studies one has to estimate some of the different cost components for studies in which they are not published (this may be why only capital costs are presented for the cross-county comparisons).

Once you have the cost data adjusted as described above the methodology looks something like this:

i) define the parameters of the technology (lifespan, time until CapManEx is needed, software costs as a % of hardware costs (n.b. usually more for FSM), CapManEx costs, Operation costs)

ii) Choose a combination of technologies to form a sanitation chain.

iii) Set the parameters of the economic analysis (choose a discount rate (they use 5% with a range of 3-8% for the sensitivity analysis, socio-economic data (e.g. HH size), etc)

iv) Calculate the annualised cost of a particular technology combination.

As you note they only present the capital costs in this table, but it is not clear if these are annualised (i.e. take into account the lifespan) or not. Annex D of the paper show the cost studies used. the figures for Nepal must be somewhere in the papers cited there (if you really want to go digging).

I'd be interested to hear if you find anything!

Best,

Zach

Dear David,

Thanks. It's nice to receive these information, and to hear from you having watched your interesting videos. I will revert in case I may have any queries or remarks later. Regards, Laxman.

The Costs of Meeting SDG targets - Guy H and Mili V, Jan 2016, WB WSP. www.wsp.org/sites/wsp.org/files/publications/K8543.pdf


Regarding the per capita cost, I found the above document. For Nepal the per capita costs have been adopted in this to be USD 15.2 for septic tanks with FSM for the urban settings and USD 55.8 for pit latrines with FSM for the rural settings. I believe, in this the per capita costs mentioned to be "incremental off site" are cost for the FSM only excluding the toilet and septic tank costs. Would appreciate contacting if anyone is aware of how the costing was done in this document or know more about it.

With regards, Laxman

Dear Laxman,

In December of 2015, I had the chance to work with a team from SNV in Birendranagar Municipality, Nepal to investigate the feasibility of implementing city-wide FSM. We conducted a Rapid Technical Assessment to obtain data to better understand the volume of fecal sludge and the constraints that would be encountered in collecting it through an organized program. We then had the chance to work for a day with the private sector desludger (contractor) to witness the desludging procedures and gain insights into how much time it would likely take to desludge containment tanks in different parts of the municipality. We then conducted a series of workshops with local and national government staffers as well as the SNV team to add local costing information in an effort to determine the tariff required to sustain a city-wide program.

Our initial estimates came back quite low (26.4 NPR per family per month), as the assumption was that the local government would shoulder the costs for the treatment system, so these costs were not included in our initial tariff determination. Additionally, the assessment was carried out during a time when there was a fuel shortage in Nepal. There was literally no traffic on the roads resulting in very fast turnaround times for the truck. Adding in the costs for treatment, and adjusting the amount of time required for conducting the desludging operations under “normal” conditions would provide a more realistic estimate in my opinion.

When adding these figures into the Septage Management Toolkit, a tariff of 85 NPR (about $ 0.80 USD) per family per month seems to be supported by the data. The toolkit populated with the data from Birendranagar Municipality (adjusted based on my estimates of what would likely be encountered during actual implementation) as well as a document discussing the assumptions is attached. For the purpose of this posting, they should be considered as “my opinions” and not necessarily those of SNV or anyone else for that matter.

As a snapshot, the tariff estimate is based on the following parameters:
- 22,227 homes and 1,767 businesses within the coverage area (institutions including hospitals and schools are intentionally left out, as they would be covered under their own FSM program);
- The collection program would fund the purchase 5 desludging trucks at 5 cubic meters each to start, with a desludging increment of 5 cubic meters and a frequency of desludging each tank every 5 years;
- A community growth rate of 5% is anticipated;
- The desludging operation would be conducted by the private sector with a profit limited at 15% on top of the actual costs for conducting the service;
- The treatment plant would use non-mechanized technologies. The land would be provided by the Municipality but the treatment system would be funded through the tariff;
- A full time sanitary inspector employed by the municipality would support the program;
- The tariff would provide a residual fund that would support pro-poor provisions such as micro credit for purchase of toilets or upgrading septic tanks, and subsidies for the very poor.

Please note that the Septage Management Toolkit was developed to provide a rough estimate of a sustainable tariff at a pre-feasibility study level. It also assumes that the program would be launched at scale for the entire municipality, when in reality, phasing in the program over time would be the likely route of implementation. While the Toolkit was tested extensively in the Philippines, we don’t have any actual data from functioning FSM programs in Nepal, so this is still very hypothetical, but perhaps a good place to start. Users of the Toolkit can make their own adjustments as they develop their FSM programs to see how adjustments affect the tariff. For example, shifting to a 6-day work week from a 5-day work week (if feasible) makes a big difference on the tariff (due to the requirements of fewer trucks and a smaller treatment plant). Other adjustments, such as in the desludging frequency or volume of the collection increment would also have implications to the tariff.

I would be very interested to learn if you find this information useful, or if you have any suggestions for improving.
Thanks,
Dave

Dear Laxman,

I hope I am wrong, but I think that for Nepal there are very few FSM operations beyond a few pilots. This means that it is unlikely that there is good empirical data of the type you need.

Bipin Dangol-jie, maybe you can help Laxman with this?

Regards

Marijn

Dear Reetu and Elisabeth,

Thanks for your response. Regarding the context, this was from personal interest at this stage, as I am towards completion of my course on FSM from IHE.
The costing tool kit mentioned by David is for calculating the O&M cost while running the plant - I had come across this within the course. What I was looking for was the investment cost, for the very initial planning - so as to be able to think about cost as well quickly while conceiving about FSM.

Thank you again and best regards, Laxman

Dear Laxman,

David recently mentioned a costing toolkit here in this post:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/53-fae...-concept-for-myanmar

He wrote:

We used the Septage Management Toolkit to check the numbers and they are presented in the attached Excel spreadsheet. This is a toolkit developed by USAID 9 years ago. Interestingly, we have used different versions of the toolkit in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal and most recently in Indonesia for a 600 cubic meter per day project for a city of 2 million. Interesting now to try it on such a small project here at less than 2 cubic meters per day!

It is a simple tool with only 5 main tabs: i) the design flow calculator, ii) the number of collection vehicles, iii) the collections costs, iv) the treatment costs, and v) the balance sheet and tariff calculator.

Have you checked it out if it's any good?

Also there are these two FSM toolkits, do they contain what you're looking for?:

• CEPT University: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/53-fae...ject-cept-university
• AIT and partners: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/53-fae...hailand-and-partners

Please let us know what you find. And I agree with Reetu that it would be interesting to know more about the context of your question?

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hello Laxman,
Greetings from Nepal!
I work for Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) as Sanitation Engineer. As, I have been working on FSM, I'm quite interested in your post. Can you please share the purpose for the information (can you please elaborate this?) you searching for?

Regards
Reetu