Clean water by Riverbank Filtration Technique (RBF) - A Demonstration of a novel site selection and implementation strategy in Southern India
for World Bank under Development Marketplace award 2007

Summary

Idea

Riverbank filtration (RBF) operates by extracting water from wells located near rivers (~20 to 200 m away). If engineered correctly, most of the extracted RBF water originates from the river. As this river water passes through the riverbed sediments, contaminants are removed by overlapping biological, physical, and chemical processes. Although simple in concept, the performance of an RBF system is dependent on local conditions, such as permeability of the riverbank, river level and sediment transport variability, and the type and load of contamination. These RBF site conditions are typically assessed for geographically narrowly defined sites, e.g. individual cities. Our approach to RBF seeks implementation over a much larger area (watershed), by employing modern spatial data referencing methods, i.e. geographical information systems (GIS) and geographic positioning systems (GPS).

Objective

To provide villagers in rural areas with safe, affordable, and reliable drinking water using a low-cost, easily replicated approach to treating polluted surface water resources with riverbank filtration wells.

Rationale

About 21% of communicable diseases in India are water related and polluted water kills over 1,600 people every day. India’s ability to sustain its rapidly expanding economy therefore depends heavily on improving its drinking water quality and infrastructure. Most major water suppliers however are inefficient or do not serve all areas, while private wells often fail prematurely. Hence, local communities need to have affordable alternatives to sustain themselves with clean drinking water at predictable quantities, qualities, and cost.

Innovation

Our approach combines a low-tech, low-cost water treatment technology, known as riverbank filtration (RBF), with affordable means of water-quality analysis and uses a people-centered delivery method to transition RBF operation into local ownership. Our team expects to determine 5-10 possible RBF sites and use one of them for a demonstration, community outreach, and training of fully employed RBF operators. The project expects to provide people with access to safe drinking water with the potential of scaling it up to reach villagers in other Indian watersheds.