Do Decentralized Community Treatment Plants Provide Better Water? Evidence from Andhra Pradesh, 2015.
Authors: Marc Jeuland, et al.
Highly advanced, community-level drinking water treatment facilities are increasingly seen as water supply solutions in locations where piped in-house water systems are nonexistent or unreliable. These systems utilize combined technologies, such as advanced filtration plus ultraviolet disinfection or reverse osmosis, which are known to be highly effective for the removal of pathogens and other water contaminants. Yet there is a paucity of rigorous evidence on whether the community-level treatment model delivers water quality, health, or other benefits to households that source water from them.
We find low rates of sourcing water from the facilities (~10%), and little evidence of benefits among households living in villages receiving a community water system (CWS). Particularly among users of the CWS, we also observe short-term increases in the number of drinking water sources used and in monthly expenses on drinking water combined with decreases in in-house water treatment, and higher reported rates of diarrheal diseases among children. These findings suggest that caution and additional scrutiny is warranted before concluding that such systems provide safer water to households in communities facing drinking water quality problems.
