Piles of rotten garbage and a stench engulfed the banks of the Tonle Sap near the small port of Chhnok Tru, Kampong Chhnang. Most of the rubbish, from plastic bags to human excrement and animal carcasses, got here from a fresh market a number of steps away.
For visitors, the experience could be shocking. But for the residents of Tonle Sap – the most important freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, stretching 13,000 square kilometres across five Cambodian provinces – it’s the one environment they know, and it’s getting worse.
The Tonle Sap, or Great Lake, is becoming increasingly polluted, with agricultural chemicals and other sorts of waste being added to the water that individuals use for drinking, cooking, and washing.
“People are defecating directly into the water,” said Hakley Ke of Wetlands Work, a Phnom Penh-based social enterprise that works to guard the lake and improve the lives of some 100,000 residents of floating villages through revolutionary technologies.
One of them is HandyPod, a water treatment system that uses bacteria to show raw sewage into high-quality grey water.
The HandyPod is attached to the latrine and consists of two containers full of microbes, including bacterial cells. When raw sewage flows into the drums, they trigger microbial activity, wherein a big selection of microbes that grow within the containers eat pathogens and organic matter, purifying the sewage.
By the time the water is released into the lake, bacteria reminiscent of E. coli – the explanation for diarrhea – can have largely been destroyed.
“The end result is a much lower concentration of pathogens entering the surrounding water,” explained Wetlands Work director and founder Taber Hand. “About 1 metre from the discharge point, the water can be considered safe for recreational use.”
The HandyPod project has been tested in chosen households in 10 villages on the Tonle Sap, and the outcomes are positive. However, Hand said Wetlands Work remains to be preparing full-scale grants across the lake, and the water quality improvements is not going to be noticeable without large-scale implementation.
Source: Channel News Asia
