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7
Settled Sewerage in Africa |
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Ex Africa semper aliquid novi
Pliny The Elder (2379AD) |
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The feasibility of settled sewerage sensu Mara (Chapter 2) was mentioned by Martin (1935): |
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If there is not enough fall to give a self-cleansing velocity in the main drain, it will sometimes be possible to put in a septic tank at the head of it. The effluent from a septic tank, being free from any solids capable of choking a drain, may safely be laid with a merely nominal fall. |
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However, the earliest report on settled sewerage schemes actually installed did not appear until 28 years later (Vincent et al., 1963). This report described sewered aqua-privies in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), which have been the subject of several other reports (Mara, 1976; Feachem et al., 1978a, 1979; de Kruijff, 1978; National Housing Authority, 1979; Otis and Mara, 1985; Reed and Vines, 1991; Vines and Reed, 1991). |
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Settled sewerage (sewered aqua-privies) was also installed in 196568 in the resettlement town of New Bussa in what is now Kwara State, Nigeria (Waddy, 1971; Feachem et al., 1978b, 1979; Otis and Mara, 1985; Reed and Vines, 1992), and more recently (199195) in seven townships in South Africa, mainly as sewered conservancy tanks (D.T. Human, 1995, personal communication; see also Smith, 1993). It was proposed for (but never installed in) N'Djamena, Chad (Black and Veatch International, 1975), and also for Tunis as a means of upgrading pourflush toilets (puits perdus) (Mara, 1992). |
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