Picture this: 1,000 timber houses on stilts are clustered on the shore of a tropical island. There is no sewer system underneath them. So, raw sewage plummets directly into the sea, the ebb and flow of the tides mixing it with household trash and plastic debris. The stench, not to mention the risk of disease, is overwhelming.
It sounds almost nightmarish. But for years, this has been the situation facing residents of Lok Urai, an impoverished “water village” in the Malaysian state of Sabah.
Things are starting to change, however. At the end of March, the village wrapped up a pilot project, supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), to install sewage treatment tanks under nine homes and a school. The tanks, invented by local researchers, can treat sewage from a family of five using just 15 watts of electricity – less than many lightbulbs.
The tanks are designed to be transportable by boat, easy to install on timber columns below toilets and simple to manoeuvre among the stilts supporting floating villages. They are made of fibre-reinforced plastic, the same material villagers use for their fishing boats, which can withstand long exposure to seawater. With a capacity of 360 litres, they serve a family of five and discharge treated wastewater into the ocean after seven hours of treatment time.
“Sewage disposal used to be unregulated and it was not pleasant to see,” said Normina Abdul, headmistress of the village’s alternative learning centre. “Since the new toilet was installed at the school, I noticed the students are happier and much encouraged to be in school.”
Villagers are keen to see the project expanded and experts say the tanks could help many of the thousands of floating villages across East Malaysia struggling with sanitation.
The region, which includes the states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo, has more than 2,600km of coastline. A 2015 study estimated there are 10,185 water village homes in Sabah. Without proper sanitation, some 50,000 residents are discharging an estimated 4.2 trillion litres of untreated wastewater directly into the ocean annually, say researchers from the Universiti Putra Malaysia, which participated in the Lok Urai project.
“The UNEP-funded pilot is a successful example of an alternative and low-cost technology for wastewater treatment, economic development and community empowerment, and has great potential for large-scale replication,” says Riccardo Zennaro, a UNEP expert closely involved with the project.
The Lok Urai programme is part of a 36-month project designed to tackle pollution, reduce disease risks, and reverse the degradation of coastal ecosystems. The next phase will involve installing up to 200 treatment tanks in the village, which has some 1,150 homes on stilts. The project is being implemented by UNEP, Action Caring Team Malaysia (ACT Malaysia), a non-governmental organization, and researchers from Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Malaysia Sabah. The project is part of UNEP’s wider effort to limit ocean pollution, more than 80 per cent of which originates on land.
The project has not been without its challenges, says Mustafa Kamal Mohd Zaini, President of ACT Malaysia. Along with COVID-19-related travel restrictions and social distancing, a fire destroyed 67 timber houses, displacing dozens of families. “At one point, we had to become emergency humanitarian aid workers,” says Zaini.
Novel treatment tanks
Lok Urai’s remote location made it difficult for authorities to provide cost-efficient centralized wastewater treatment systems, says Rahinah Ibrahim from Universiti Putra Malaysia. She led a team of five researchers that invented the treatment tanks.
The tank’s lightweight makes them easy to transport to remote areas.
“The tanks are good, suitable and comfortable to use,” says Nordin Rahman, who is in charge of installing and maintaining the tanks. “In the long term, I would like to see a fabrication yard to produce quality tanks in the village. It would help generate new income for the community.”
He’s among many villagers eager to see the programme expanded. “The toilet is so good and comfortable to use. I really, really want one tank installed at my own home,” says Patrilya binti Patrik, a Standard 6 student.
Ibrahim says researchers are now hoping to build a waste-to-energy plant powered by sewage.
For more information, please contact Riccardo Zennaro: riccardo.zennaro@un.org
